Still, through these ten years she seems to have loved only that she might be unhappy.  There was a strange twist in her mind.  Men who were honorable and who loved her with sincerity she treated very badly.  Men who were indifferent or ungrateful or actually base she seemed to choose by a sort of perverse instinct.  Perhaps the explanation of it is that during those ten years, though she had many lovers, she never really loved.  She sought excitement, passion, and after that the mournfulness which comes when passion dies.  Thus, one man after another came into her life—­some of them promising marriage—­and she bore two children, whose fathers were unknown, or at least uncertain.  But, after all, one can scarcely pity her, since she had not yet in reality known that great passion which comes but once in life.  So far she had learned only a sort of feeble cynicism, which she expressed in letters and in such sayings as these: 

“There are sweet errors which I would not venture to commit again.  My experiences, all too sad, have served to illumine my reason.”

“I am utterly weary of love and prodigiously tempted to have no more of it for the rest of my life; because, after all, I don’t wish either to die or to go mad.”

Yet she also said:  “I know too well that no one dies of grief.”

She had had, indeed, some very unfortunate experiences.  Men of rank had loved her and had then cast her off.  An actor, one Clavel, would have married her, but she would not accept his offer.  A magistrate in Strasburg promised marriage; and then, when she was about to accept him, he wrote to her that he was going to yield to the wishes of his family and make a more advantageous alliance.  And so she was alternately caressed and repulsed—­a mere plaything; and yet this was probably all that she really needed at the time—­something to stir her, something to make her mournful or indignant or ashamed.

It was inevitable that at last Adrienne Lecouvreur should appear in Paris.  She had won such renown throughout the provinces that even those who were intensely jealous of her were obliged to give her due consideration.  In 1717, when she was in her twenty-fifth year, she became a member of the Comedie Franchise.  There she made an immediate and most brilliant impression.  She easily took the leading place.  She was one of the glories of Paris, for she became the fashion outside the theater.  For the first time the great classic plays were given, not in the monotonous singsong which had become a sort of theatrical convention, but with all the fire and naturalness of life.

Being the fashion, Mlle. Lecouvreur elevated the social rank of actors and of actresses.  Her salon was thronged by men and women of rank.  Voltaire wrote poems in her honor.  To be invited to her dinners was almost like receiving a decoration from the king.  She ought to have been happy, for she had reached the summit of her profession and something more.