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
Fouché, 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 Gaëtan Vestris * and Auguste,
his son. Gaétan 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
Académie fifty years after his _début_ 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 Gaëtan.

It is of Gaëtan that the story is told in connection with Gluck, when
the opera of "Orphée" was put in rehearsal. The dancer wished for a
ballet in the opera.