* This _mot_ the Paris wits have revived at the expense of
Mlle. Sara Bernhardt.

One day Voltaire said to her, "Ah! mademoiselle, I am eighty-four years
old, and I have committed eighty-four follies" (_sottises_). "A mere
trifle," responded Sophie; "I am not yet forty, and I have committed
more than a thousand."

For a time Mile. Arnould suffered under a loss of court favor, owing
to her having made Mme. Du Barry the butt of her pointed sarcasms. A
_lettre de cachet_ would have been the fate of another, but Sophie was
too much of a popular idol to be so summarily treated. She, however,
retired for a time from the theatre with a pension of two thousand
francs, having already accumulated a splendid fortune. Instantly that
it was known she was under a cloud, there were plenty to urge that she
never had any voice, and that her only good points were beauty and fine
acting. Abbé Galiani, a court parasite, remarked one night, "It's the
finest asthma I ever heard."

In 1774 the great composer Gluck, whose genius was destined to have such
a profound influence on French music, came to Paris with his "Iphigenie
en Aulide," by invitation of the Dauphiness Marie Antoinette, who had
formerly been his musical pupil. The stiff and stilted works of Sully
and Rameau had thus far ruled the French stage without any competition,
except from the Italian operettas performed by the company of Les
Bouffons, and the new school of French operatic comedy developed into
form by the lively genius of Grétry. When Gluck's magnificent opera,
constructed on new art principles, was given to the Paris public,
April 19, 1774, it created a deep excitement, and divided critics and