sent for to sing in the King's Chapel, and, in spite of the aversion of
Anne's pious mother, who was afraid with good reason of the influences
of the dissipated court, she was placed thus in contact with power and
royalty. The beautiful Pompadour heard her charming voice, and remarked,
with that effusion of sentiment which veneered her cruel selfishness,
"Ah! with such a talent, she might become a princess." This opinion of
the imperious and all-powerful favorite decided the girl's fate; for it
was equivalent to a mandate for her _début_. The precocious child knew
the danger of the path opened for her. To the remonstrances of her
mother she said with a shrug of her pretty shoulders: "To go to the
opera is to go to the devil. But what matters it? It is my destiny."
Poor Mme. Arnould scolded, shuddered, and prayed, and ended it, as she
thought, by shutting the girl up in a convent. But Louis XV. got wind
of this threatened checkmate, and a royal mandate took her out of the
convent walls which had threatened to immure her for life. Anne was
placed with Clairon, the great tragedienne, to learn acting, and with
Mlle. Fel to learn singing. As a consequence, while she had some
rivals in the beauty of her voice, her acting surpassed anything on the
operatic stage of that era.


II.

When Anne Arnould made her first appearance, she assumed the name of
Sophie on account of the softer sound of its syllables. Her _début_,
September 15, 1757, was one of most brilliant success, and in a
night Paris was at her feet. Her genius, her beauty, her voice, her
magnificent eyes, her incomparable grace and fascinating witchery of
manner, were the talk of the city; and the opera was besieged every
night she sang. Fréron, in speaking of the waiting crowds, said, "I