the message of an unknown lady visitor. On receiving her he instantly
recognized the still beautiful and sparkling lineaments of the woman he
had once adored. Fouché, touched, heard her story, and by his powerful
intercession secured for her a pension of twenty-four hundred livres and
handsome apartments in the Hôtel D'Angevil-liers. Here she speedily drew
around her again the philosophers and fashionables, the poets and the
artists of the age; and the Sophie Arnould of the golden days of old
seemed resurrected in the vivacity and brilliancy of the talk from which
time and misfortune had taken nothing of its pungent salt. In 1803 she
died obscurely; and the same year there also passed out of the world
two other celebrated women, the great actress Clairon and the singer De
Beaumesnil, once Sophie's rival.

Lord Mount Edgcumbe, in his "Musical Reminiscences," speaks of Sophie
Arnould, whom he heard in ante-revolutionary days, as a woman of
entrancing beauty and very great dramatic genius. This connoisseur tells
us too that her voice, though limited in range and not very flexible,
was singularly rich, strong, and sweet, fitting her exceptionally for
the performance of the simple and noble arias of Gluck, which were
rather characterized by elevation and dramatic warmth than florid
ornamentation. Her place in art is, therefore, as the finest
contemporary interpreter of Wagner's greater predecessor.




ELIZABETH BILLINGTON AND HER CONTEMPORARIES.

Elizabeth Weichsel's Runaway Marriage.--_Début_ at Covent Garden.--Lord
Mount Edgcumbe's Opinion of her Singing.--Her Rivalry with Mme.