In the Rue de Bethisy, Paris, stood a house, the Hotel de Chatillon, from the window of one of whose rooms assassins flung the gory head of the great Admiral de Coligni down to the Duke de Guise on the night of Saint Bartholomew, 1572.  In that same room was born, February 14, 1744, Sophie Arnould, the daughter of the proprietor, who had transformed the historic dwelling into a hostelry.  She grew up a bright, lively, and beautiful child, and was conscious from an early age of the value of her talents.  Anne, as she was then called (for the change to Sophie was made afterward), would say with exultation:  “We shall be as rich as princes.  A good fairy has given me a talisman to transform everything into gold and diamonds at the sound of my voice.”

Accident brought her talent to light.  It was then the fashion for ladies, after confessing their sins in Passion Week, to retire for some days to a religious house, there to expiate by fasting the faults and misdemeanors committed during the gayeties of the Carnival.  It chanced that when Anne was about twelve years old the Princess of Modena retired to the convent of Val-de-Grace, and in attending vespers heard one voice which, for power and purity, she thought had never been surpassed.  Fine voices were at a premium then in France, and the Princess at once decided that she had discovered a treasure.  She inquired who was the owner of this exquisite organ, and was informed that it was little Anne Arnould.  The Princess sent for the child, who came readily, and was not in the least abashed by the presence of the great lady, but sang like a nightingale and chattered like a magpie.  The wit and beauty of the girl charmed the Princess, and she threw a costly necklace about her throat.  “Come, my lovely child,” said she; “you sing like an angel, and you have more wit than an angel.  Your fortune is made.”  As a result of the praises so loudly chanted by the Princess of Modena, the child was 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 debut.  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.