During Passion week and Easter, the Opera was shut, but the great operatic vocalists could be heard elsewhere, either at the Jesuits' church or at the Abbaye of Longchamp, to which latter establishment it is generally imagined that the Parisian public used to be attracted by the singing of the nuns. What is far more extraordinary is, that the Parisians always laboured under that delusion themselves. "The Parisians," says M. Castil Blaze, in his "History of the Grand Opera," "always such fine connoisseurs in music, never penetrated the mystery of this incognito. The railing and the green curtain, behind which the voices were concealed, sufficed to render the singers unrecognisable to the _dilettanti_ who heard them constantly at the opera." Adjoining the Jesuits' church was a theatre, also belonging to the Jesuits, for which, between the years 1659 and 1761, eighty pieces of various kinds, including tragedies, operas and ballets, were written. Some of these productions were in Latin, some in French, some in Latin and French together. The _virtuosi_ of the Académie used to perform in them and afterwards proceed to the church to sing motets. "This church is so much the church of the Opera," says Freneuse, "that those who do not go to one console themselves by attending vespers at the other, where they find the same thing at less cost." He adds, that "an actor newly engaged, would not think himself fully recognised unless asked to sing for the Jesuits." As for the actresses, "in their honor the price which would be given at the door of the opera is given for a chair in the church. People look out for Urgande, Arcabonne, Armide, and applaud them. (I have seen them applaud la Moreau and la Chérat, at the midnight mass.) These performances replace those which are suspended at the opera." * * * * * [Sidenote: BEHIND THE SCENES.] There would be no end to this chapter (and many persons would think it better not written) if I were to enter into details on the subject of the relations between the singers and dancers of the Académie, and the Grands Seigneurs of the period. I may observe, however, that the latter appear to have been far more generous, without being more vicious, and that they seem to have lived in better taste than their modern imitators, who usually ruin themselves by means of race-horses, or, in France, on the Stock Exchange. The Count de Lauragais paid an immense sum to the directors of the Académie, to compensate them for abolishing the seats on the stage (probably impertinent visitors used to annoy him by staring at Sophie Arnould); the Duke de Bouillon spent nine hundred thousand livres on Mademoiselle la Guerre (Gluck's _Iphigénie_); the Prince de Soubise nearly as much on Mademoiselle Guimard--who at least gave a portion of it away in charity, and who, as we have seen, was an intelligent patroness of David, the painter.