“gift of pleasing spread over all her person.” She was full of grace,
very well made and had a physiognomy that was sweet and charming. M.
de Turgis, an officer in the Gardes-Françaises, fell madly in love
with her and married her in 1691. She was twenty-seven years of age
and her husband was twenty-one. The father and mother of M. de Turgis
entered in 1693 a plaint against their daughter-in-law, accusing her of
the subornation of their son. The mother of Françoise Biancolelli, in
her ignorance of the laws of France and to defeat the parents of her
daughter’s husband in their plaint, announced to them that between her
daughter and their son there existed no convention, treaty or celebration
of marriage. In 1694, the father and mother of M. de Turgis made a will
disinheriting their son “to punish him for his shameful alliance with
Françoise-Marie-Apolline Biancolelli, protesting, for the rest, to
declare null the marriage which he might have contracted with her did
they come to discover it.”
Coming into possession of proofs of the marriage, they had their son
removed to Angers, and they enjoined upon him to declare that he had been
abused and suborned. Of a weak character, he gave way and signed this
declaration. Nevertheless he repaired immediately to a notary to protest
against the step he had just taken.
The Parliament gave judgment on the 11th February 1695, declaring the
marriage null, and forbidding the Sieur de Turgis and Mademoiselle
Françoise Biancolelli “to cohabit, under pain of corporal punishment, or
to enter into a fresh contract of marriage, under pain of its nullity.”
And this “whether during the lifetime or after the death of his father
and mother.” Against this Constantin de Turgis lodged a yearly protest
with his notary—there are seven of them in existence.
Françoise Biancolelli had left the theatre in 1695. The father of M. de
Turgis died in the same year, but the fate of the young couple was not
ameliorated until 1701. They were then remarried under a dispensation
from the Cardinal of Noailles, and they declared that “there had been
born of them under faith of marriage two children then living, namely:
Charles-Dominique de Turgis des Chaises, born in 1692, and a daughter who
later on became Madame Millin de Tressolles.”
“From that time onwards, M. de Turgis went publicly to visit his wife,
and even appeared with her in public places.” Although he continued to
make use of rooms at his mother’s house, he lived with his wife in the
Rue des Petits-Pères, received there, and spent there most of his time,
whilst Françoise Biancolelli publicly bore his name.
The mother of M. de Turgis died on the 2nd February 1704, and renewed
in her will the two acts of disinheritance should her son remarry
Mademoiselle Biancolelli, as if she were in ignorance of the fact that
they were already remarried, an ignorance hardly possible considering
that they lived in the same parish.
M. de Turgis died on the 29th April 1706. Perceiving that his end was
approaching, he sent for his nephew, de Turgis de Canteleu, then in
his fourteenth year. He represented to him in a touching manner the
sad position of his wife and children, caused him to embrace them and
recommended them to him. Young Canteleu promised that he would never
abandon his aunt and cousins. He kept his word for, dying at the age of
twenty-one, he left to Charles-Dominique, his cousin, an income of eight
thousand livres to sustain his name, and an income of four thousand to
the sister.
After the death of her husband, who left nothing but debts, seeing
that he died disinherited, Françoise Biancolelli was reduced to seek
assistance, having spent her own possessions to support her husband in
military service. The courts pronounced a judgment in 1709, granting her
a pension of a thousand livres for herself and her children, and in 1713
the king, desiring to recompense the services of Constantin de Turgis in
the person of his widow, awarded her a further pension of three hundred
livres.
Madame de Turgis left two children, Charles-Dominique de Turgis,
chevalier of Saint-Louis and an officer in the royal navy, and
Marie-Anne-Reine de Turgis, the wife of the Sieur Millin de Tressolles.
v
Giovanna Rosa Benozzi, celebrated under the name of SILVIA, went to
Paris with the troupe summoned by the Regent in 1716. She played for
forty-two years the parts of leading lady with the same vivacity, the
same shrewdness, and always producing the same illusion. The inconstant
public never cooled towards her. She enjoyed applause until the hour
of her death, and was mourned with the liveliest regrets. She excelled
especially in the plays of M. de Marivaux, of whose fine and witty
dialogue she had a perfect grasp. A volume would hardly suffice to
contain all the praise which she received in prose and verse.
The rôles of Silvia were very diverse. In the plays of Marivaux, like _Le
Jeu de l’Amour et du Hasard_, she is at once mistress and soubrette. In
other pieces she is just a soubrette, sometimes a simple naïve peasant
girl, or an innocent shepherdess, as in _Arlequin Poli par l’Amour_, the
first play which Marivaux produced at the Comédie-Italienne.
Harlequin enters, playing with a battledore and shuttlecock, and in this
fashion advances to the feet of Silvia. There, still playing, he lets
the shuttlecock fall, and in stooping to pick it up he perceives Silvia;
astonished, he remains arrested in his stooping attitude; little by
little he comes jerkily erect again; then he looks at her. She, in an
access of shyness, attempts to withdraw; he arrests her with the words:
“You are in a hurry then?”
SILVIA. I withdraw because I do not know you.
HARLEQUIN. You do not know me? So much the worse. Let us make
acquaintance, shall we?
SILVIA (_shyly_). Certainly.
HARLEQUIN (_approaching her, and signifying his joy in little
bursts of laughter_). You are very pretty!
SILVIA. You are very amiable.
HARLEQUIN. Not at all, I speak the truth.
SILVIA (_laughing a little in her turn_). You are very pretty
too.
HARLEQUIN. So much the better. Where do you live? I shall come
and see you.
Silvia tells him that she is beloved of a shepherd who might spy upon
them, which afflicts Harlequin; but she assures him that she does not
love the shepherd, and Harlequin is consoled. He informs her in his turn
that he lodges with the Fairy, which arouses jealousy in Silvia because,
she says, the fairy is more beautiful than she. Harlequin reassures her.
Soon Silvia has no uneasiness other than that occasioned her by her
sheep; they are straying and she is obliged to follow them. Harlequin
takes her hand and kisses it, saying: “Oh! the pretty little fingers! I
never had sweetmeats as good as these!” And thus they separate.
In another scene Silvia returns with a cousin, another shepherdess,
whose advice she asks. “Harlequin has already kissed my hand,” she says,
“and he will want to kiss it again. Advise me, you who have had so many
lovers. Shall I allow him?”
“Beware of doing so,” replies the cousin. “Be very severe, for that
ferments the affection of a lover, and beware of telling him that you
love him.”
“But how can I help it?” asks Silvia.
Harlequin returns; tendernesses between the two lovers; jealousy of the
fairy, who causes the disappearance of Silvia; then ruses of Harlequin,
to whom love has given so much spirit that he purloins the magic wand of
the fairy, leaving her impotent; he presents it to Silvia, who employs it
to evoke spirits and devils, which are beaten by Harlequin.
In _L’Amante Romanesque_ (1718) Silvia confesses to her waiting-woman,
Spinette, that she is still in ignorance of what love may mean
notwithstanding that she has been married; but, in the solitude in which
her husband left her, she spent her time in reading romances which have
turned her head. She detests all men, she says, and she is to take into
her service a certain Marinette who speaks, perhaps, more ill of the
male sex than she does herself. This Marinette is no other than Mario,
who, in the disguise of a waiting-woman, seeks to gain the presence of
Silvia whom he loves. Spinette opposes herself at first, but, after many
promises from Mario, and after he has sworn that he has no design beyond
that of seeing Silvia, Spinette presents him to her mistress and he is
engaged as a waiting-woman. Wishing, however, to be faithful to his word
to Spinette, Marinette (Mario) excuses himself from entering the service
of Silvia, saying that he has just come into an inheritance from an aunt,
who has left him an income of twelve thousand livres. “That,” he says,
“is the wherewithal to seek a husband.”
SILVIA. I am charmed by what you tell me, and you are not to
doubt that it was my aim to care for your fortune by attaching
you to myself.
MARINETTE (Mario). Madame, I am already more attached to you
than you think.
SILVIA. But you speak already of seeking a husband, and you
hated men so bitterly.
MARINETTE. Nevertheless one always ends that way. Still, I
shall hold back as much as possible and perhaps all my life; I
am very difficult to please.
SILVIA. What is your taste? Let us hear.
MARINETTE. I desire one who has the heart of an Italian and the
manners of a Frenchman.
Silvia approves these ideas, nevertheless she continues to denounce all
men. Spinette and Marinette in an even greater degree follow her example.
In the end Marinette says so much ill of them that Silvia embraces him
with fervour.
SILVIA. Come, my dear Marinette, let me embrace you. I love
you with all my heart. I find in you my own thoughts, my
sentiments, my humour. (_To SPINETTE, who attempts to check
her._) Stand aside, Spinette. I want to kiss her a thousand
times.
SPINETTE. Madame, spare me the sight of it.
SILVIA. Why should you oppose it?
SPINETTE. I’m jealous.
SILVIA. Withdraw, silly. Approach, my heroine, let me stifle
you with caresses. (_To SPINETTE._) What does that mean? Why
do you tear her from my arms? Release me, I tell you, and stand
aside.
SPINETTE. But, madame, you have read romances; do you not
remember Céladon who disguised himself as a girl to approach
his mistress Astræ?
SILVIA. What then?
SPINETTE. If perchance Marinette were a boy who had had the
same idea, should I be right to allow you to continue as you
are doing?
SILVIA. Ha, ha! You are still making fun of my romances. If
Marinette, with the spirit and the sentiments which are hers,
were a boy, that boy to-morrow would be my husband.
Mario goes down upon his knees and declares himself. Silvia forgives, and
accepts him for her cavalier pending that he shall become her husband.
In _The Portrait_ (1727), a play by M. Beauchamp, Silvia has assumed the
garments of her soubrette Columbine, and passes herself off as Columbine.
She gives a very bad reception to Valerius, the future husband destined
her by her father. Valerius is not duped; but he pretends to mistake her
for her waiting-woman, and thus discloses to her his sentiments in a
more delicate manner. But the more Valerius displays his submission to
the orders of the beautiful Silvia, the more does she, believing him to
be indifferent, attempt to turn him aside. With this aim in view, she
herself sketches her portrait for him:
“First of all she is neither tall nor short, neither well made
nor ill made. She is fat rather than thin, and notwithstanding
all that, a rare thing to-day, she has a figure, and she has
a little air of recklessness and youth that is arresting.
It is perhaps neither wit nor brilliance, yet it partakes
of both. She is white and rosy; she has eyes and teeth; she
dances passably; in a word she is like a thousand others.
On the subject of her conduct there is nothing to tell you.
She lives as all girls live to-day. As for her temper, faith,
it is not easy to define it. She is gentle by reflection,
sharp by temperament, timid in the things which she knows,
decided in those of which she is ignorant, imperious with
those who owe her nothing, exigent without friendship, jealous
without passion, absent-minded to the point of forgetfulness,
and unequal to the point of brusqueness; in short it is so
difficult to live with her that I cannot bear to be with her
most of the time. Do you know who is the master, the guide,
the director of all her actions and of all her sayings? It is
Caprice.”
Valerius pretends to attach faith to this portrait, which he knows does
not at all resemble her since he has the original under his eyes; to
pique her he says that he will renounce Silvia, an announcement which
angers her.
Silvia was the subject of many madrigals, sonnets and epistles composed
in her honour. She was born in Toulouse, of Italian parents. She was
married in Paris, in 1720, to Giuseppe Baletti, known by the name of
_Mario_. Of this marriage was born Antoine-Louis Baletti (_Lelio_), who
entered the Théâtre-Italien in 1742, Louis Baletti, who became a dancer,
and Jeanne Baletti, who married Blondel, the royal architect. Silvia died
in 1759.
vi
At the time that the famous Silvia was undertaking rôles which demanded
such versatility, FLAMINIA, the wife of Louis Riccoboni (Lelio), was
playing the parts of leading lady.
Elena-Virginia Baletti was born at Ferrara in 1686. She visited in her
childhood the various theatres of Italy. Her parents, although poor, gave
her an education calculated to place her above the majority of her class.
From her most tender youth she passed for one of the best actresses of
her country.
Louis Riccoboni, already at the age of twenty-two the director of a
company, perceived in the talents of Mademoiselle Baletti a means of
reintroducing to the Italian stage the qualities that it had lost. He
sought and obtained her in marriage. She went to Paris with her husband
in 1716 to contribute with him to the academic reformation of the
theatre, after having vainly attempted it in Italy, where the masks had
remained masters of the field; but the French public also loved Harlequin
and Scaramouche, and the performances of Italian masterpieces could never
have sufficed for the success of this new company. It was necessary to
give way to the demand for the masks. Flaminia retired with Riccoboni in
1732. Justice was done to her talents, and she was esteemed not only as
an excellent actress but also as a very learned woman. She spoke Spanish
and French quite as well as her mother tongue, and made considerable
progress in a serious study of Latin.
Flaminia drew from the _Rudens_ of Plautus the subject for her comedy
_Naufrage_, which was not a success. Her play _Abdilly, Roi de Grenade_,
a tragi-comedy written in collaboration with Delisle, was also not a
success. Out of conceit with the theatre she left it entirely in 1733 and
dwelt in retirement until 1771, the epoch of her death.
Marie Laboras de Mézières, born in Paris in 1713, made her first
appearance on the 23rd August 1734, in the rôle of Lucile, in _La
Surprise de l’Amour_. She married François Riccoboni the son, and
withdrew from the Théâtre-Italien in 1761. She wrote various French
scenes to be introduced into the Italian scenarii, but it is as a French
novelist that Madame Riccoboni earned the durable celebrity of her name:
_Lettres de Fanny Butler_, _Ernestine_, _Histoire du Marquis de Catesby_,
were her principal works. She also translated several English pieces: _La
Façon de se Fixer_, _La Femme Jalouse_, _La Fausse Délicatesse_ and _Il
Est Possédé_. She was one of the greatest wits of her day. She died in
1792.
On the 3rd May 1730, Anna-Elisabeth Constantini, the daughter of
Giovanni-Battista Constantini (the _Ottavio_ of the old company), made
her début at the Comédie-Italienne to play such characters as Isabelle
and Silvia.
vii
Giacometta-Antonia Veronese, known under the name of CAMILLE, was born
in Venice in 1735. She went to France in 1744 with her father Veronese
(Pantaloon) and her sister Anna Veronese (Coraline), being then no more
than nine years of age. Camille made her début as a dancer on the 21st
May 1744, at the same time that her sister and father were making their
first appearance in _Coraline, Esprit Follet_, a piece which enjoyed a
great vogue. Subsequently she was seen in the rôles of leading lady, in
1747, at the age of twelve, in a scenario (_Les Sœurs Rivales_) written
expressly for her by her father.
“Camille,” says an author of that time, “had a gesture of an
expressiveness such as is not to be learned before a mirror, and an
accent of a naturalness such as art can never yield, but such as the
heart may prompt when it is moved. Free from ambition and jealousy, she
was innocent of those rivalries which nearly always spring up among women
of her condition. Her character was in her face, and one saw imprinted
there nobility, frankness, wit and gaiety; no woman of her state ever
carried disinterestedness further, nor did ingratitude succeed in
turning her aside from beneficence. With a beneficent soul it is almost
impossible not to have a tender heart; these qualities are nearly always
inseparable, and if her sensibility permitted her some weaknesses she
knew how to earn pardon for them by the constancy of her attachment.”
“The Sieur Billioni has just produced at the Théâtre-Italien
the ballet _Pygmalion_ with success. The subject is so well
known that it is unnecessary for me to enter into details of
it. I will remark only that the Demoiselle Camille, who plays
the part of the statue, renders it with the most singular
truth. Nothing can equal the delicacy of her pantomime,
particularly in the scene when the statue gradually becomes
animate; she depicts her surprise, her curiosity, her nascent
love, and all the sudden or graduated movements of her soul,
with an expression such as has never yet been equalled. I think
that the art of the ancient Greek and Roman mimes could not
surpass the talents of Camille in this style of work” (Letter
of FAVART to M. de Durazzo, 27th December 1760).
“‘_Thémire Délivrée_, such is the title of the ballet-pantomime
performed by Billon,’ says Biglioni, the erstwhile
ballet-master of the Opéra-Comique. Thémire (Mademoiselle
Camille), amidst a troop of hunters, delivers her orders,
departs with them to beat the countryside, and leaves the
stage empty (a gross fault). Two woodcutters and the wife of
one of them dance a _pas de trois_. They go off as they came
on without explaining the reason of their appearance. Thémire
reappears; she has been involuntarily separated from the hunt.
She finds herself alone and expresses her fears. A savage
perceives her from the height of a hill, comes abruptly down
and seizes her; she swoons in terror; the savage binds her with
slender branches of willow and drags her into his cave. At this
critical moment the hunters arrive and perceive the danger of
Thémire; they charge up the hill; savages armed with clubs hurl
themselves upon them. Ah! what is happening during this time to
poor Thémire? Finally, luckily or unluckily, the savages are
routed and Thémire is delivered. Were they in time or were they
not in time? That is what remains to be explained. Be it as it
may Thémire is brought on in triumph to the sound of cymbals.
(Why cymbals?) There are rejoicings on the deliverance of
Thémire. The conquered savages also rejoice. (Wherefore?)
“Notwithstanding these absurdities the ballet gives great
pleasure. That is because it is perfectly executed. It is
because Camille, who represents Thémire, is an excellent
comedienne” (FAVART, 1st August 1760).
Camille died in 1768 at the age of thirty-three.
Among other actresses of fame who played in Italy during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries let us cite those who played under the names
of Clarice, Angela, Graziosa, Rosaura, Eleonora, Diana, Beatrice or
Isabella, the Signore Alborghezzi, 1600; Armelini, 1600; Andreoletti,
1602; Garziani, 1610; Aspontini, 1630; Pazzighetti, 1661; Teresa-Corona
Sabolini, who played in 1688 under the name of Ottavia Diana; Giovanna
Amatis, 1695; Anziani, 1715; Malatesta, 1720; Albertini, 1706; Antonia
Albani, 1760; Teodora Ricci of Padua, who exercised so great an influence
on the talent of Carlo Gozzi, 1760; Felicita and Rosalie Bonami, 1775;
Marianna Bassi, 1750; etc.
XIII
SCAPINO
Endowed with honeyed language, engaging manners and a sycophantic
politeness, BRIGHELLA is the most infamous rascal that ever drew
breath. He does not even display the brutal frankness of Polichinelle
to counterbalance the baseness of his sentiments. He is a smirking cat
concealing vicious claws in pads of velvet. Lively and insolent with
women, braggart and boastful with old men and cowards, he decamps on the
approach of any of those who do not fear him. There is a great deal to be
dreaded from him; the more you have frightened him the less disposed is
he to forgive you, and if you should receive a stab in the dark, be sure
that his was the hand that dealt it. A singer, a dancer and a musician,
when he desires to do anyone an evil turn there is no house into which
he is not able to insinuate himself. He is a valuable servant to the man
who knows how to employ his talents. As his needs are many, he requires
a deal of money, and if you know how to flatter his self-love and to
pay him well, there is neither girl nor woman in Italy whom he is not
able to wheedle for you. He has discharged all kinds of offices; he has
been a soldier, an attorney’s clerk, and he has even turned hangman’s
assistant so as to abstract himself from the attentions of justice. The
service he prefers to all others is that of lovers, and it is rather
from inclination than from necessity that he loves what he calls _his
estate_. For if there is no one to serve he will work for his own
account to keep himself in practice, and then woe betide the young girls
who fall under his claws! They are for ever lost if they lend an ear to
his proposals and his sophisms. Brighella believes absolutely in nothing
but the rope which is one day to hang him; hence a glimpse of a watchman
will reduce him to a condition which it is impossible to describe.
Such was the old Brighella; but in the course of centuries and of
civilisation he has improved a little. He is still imbued with the same
instincts, but he does not assassinate quite so freely. To-day many women
are able to look him in the face without trembling and to listen to him
without believing. He is far more terrible to the purses of old men,
which he purloins with incredible dexterity. His dreams are of nothing
but thefts like the Epidicus of Plautus, from whom he descends in direct
line.
“As for me,” says Epidicus, “I am going to assemble the Senate of my mind
to deliberate upon what I shall do. For it is upon money (however much
it may be our best friend) that I am going to declare war. What source
shall I tap? I must neither fall asleep nor draw back. I am resolved to
make a fresh attempt upon my old master. I have procured a sharp knife to
disembowel the old man’s purse. But what do I see? Two old men at once!
What a capture! I shall transform myself into a leech and suck their
blood....”
Later, when he is content with his misdeeds:
“I do not believe that in all Attica there is a soil more fruitful than
my old master. I take all the money I want from his cupboard, however
locked and sealed he may leave it. But should the old man come to
perceive it, ’ware the rod!”
Brighella, whose name signifies intriguer, is as old as Harlequin, his
compatriot. We have already said that both were natives of Bergamo. The
Slaveró of _La Piovana_ of Angelo Beolco is a true Brighella.
“As for me,” he says, “I find nothing difficult; I am accustomed to
despise things. I want two young girls, and if it be not sufficient to
kill one man I shall kill two. Do you not remember that dispute in which
I stabbed a man as easily as you prick a bladder, and of that other
fellow whose bones I broke as you squelch a bean?”
Elsewhere we hear him declaring: “I am now going to seek Sittono, into
whose hands the girl must have fallen by now. I shall so contrive with
amiable words that he shall give me the fifty livres promised me so that
I may get me hence. And should anyone suggest that I have acted badly, I
shall throw the entire fault of it upon my gossip.”
Slaveró recks nothing of being a perjurer like Brighella. A purse has
been stolen, and Bertevello, the fisherman, knows who has it.
BERTEVELLO. Good-morrow, comrade. What is your name?