* 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.  Abbe 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 Gretry.  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 connoisseurs into opposing and embittered camps, in which the most distinguished wits, poets, and philosophers ranged themselves, and pelted each other with lampoons, pamphlets, and epigrams, which often left wounds that had to be healed afterward by an application of cold steel.  In this contest Sophie Arnould, who had speedily emerged from her retirement, took an active part, for Gluck had selected her to act the part of his heroines.  The dramatic intensity and breadth of the German composer’s conceptions admirably suited Sophie, whose genius for acting was more marked than her skill in singing.  The success of Gluck’s “Iphigenie” gave the finishing stroke to the antiquated operas of Rameau, in which the singer had made her reputation, and offered her a nobler vehicle for art-expression.  On her association with Gluck’s music Sophie Arnould’s fame in the history of art now chiefly rests.