It has been said that Talma was the first to discard the absurd costumes of the theatre, but this credit really belongs to Mme. Saint Huberty.  She studied the Greek and Roman statues, and wore robes in keeping with the antique characters, especially suppressing hoops and powder.  This singer remained queen of the French stage until 1790, when she retired.  During the time of her art reign she appeared in many of the principal operas of Piccini, Salieri, Sacchini, and Gretry, showing but little less talent for comedy than for tragedy.  She retired from public life to become the wife of the Count d’Entraignes.  Her tragic fate many years afterward is one of the celebrated political assassinations of the age.  Count d’Entraignes at this time was residing at Barnes, England, having recently left the diplomatic service of Russia, in which he had shown himself one of the most dangerous enemies of the Napoleonic government in France.  The Count’s Piedmontese valet had been bribed by a spy of Fouche, the French Minister of Police, to purloin certain papers.  The valet was discovered by his master, and instantly stabbed him, and, as the Countess entered the room a moment afterward, he also pierced her heart with the stiletto recking with her husband’s blood, finishing the shocking tragedy by blowing out his own brains.  Thus died, in 1812, one who had been among the most brilliant ornaments of the French stage.

No record of Sophie Arnould’s artistic associates is complete without some allusion to the celebrated dancers Gaetan Vestris * and Auguste, his son.  Gaetan was accustomed to say that there were three great men in Europe—­Voltaire, Frederick the Great, and himself.  In his old age he preserved all his skill, and M. Castel Blaze, who saw him at the Academie fifty years after his debut in 1748, declares that he still danced with inimitable grace.

     * Mme. Vestris, the last of the family, and the first wife
     of the English comedian Charles Mathews, was the
     granddaughter of Gaetan.

It is of Gaetan that the story is told in connection with Gluck, when the opera of “Orphee” was put in rehearsal.  The dancer wished for a ballet in the opera.

“Write me the music of a chacone, Monsieur Gluck,” said the god of dancing.

“A chacone!” ejaculated the astonished composer; “do you think the Greeks, whose manners we are endeavoring to depict, knew what a chacone was?”

“Did they not?” said Vestris, amazed at the information; then, in a tone of compassion, “How much they are to be pitied!”