La Gaussin had that excellent thing in woman--a sympathetic voice. Her pathos melted all hearts to the melodious sorrow of her own. In Bérénice, her pathetic charm had such an effect on one of the sentinels, who, in those days, were posted at the wings, that he unconsciously let his musket fall from his arm. Her eyes were as eloquent as her voice was persuasive. In other respects, Clairon (an actress) has said of her that La Gaussin had instinct rather than intelligence, with beauty, dignity, gracefulness, and an invariably winning manner which nothing could resist. Her great fault, according to the same authority, was sameness. Clairon added that she played Zaïre in the same manner as she did Rodogune. It is as if an English actress were to make no difference between Desdemona and Lady Macbeth. When La Gaussin had reached the age of forty-seven the French pit did what the French nation invariably does--smote down the idol which it had once worshipped. The uncrowned queen married an Italian ballet dancer, one Tevolaigo, who rendered her miserable, but died two years before her, in 1767. It is, however, said that Mdlle. La Gaussin was led to withdraw from the stage out of sincerely religious scruples. A score of French actresses have done the same thing, and long before they had reached the _quarantaine_. There is a good illustration of how unwilling the French audiences were to lose a word of La Gaussin’s utterances in Cibber’s ‘Apology.’ ‘At the tragedy of “Zaïre,”’ he says, ‘while the celebrated Mdlle. Gossin (_sic_) was delivering a soliloquy, a gentleman was seized with a sudden fit of coughing, which gave the actress some surprise and interruption, and, his fit increasing, she was forced to stand silent so long that it drew the eyes of the uneasy audience upon him; when a French gentleman, leaning forward to him, asked him if this actress had given him any particular offence, that he took so public an occasion to resent it? The English gentleman, in the utmost surprise, assured him that, so far from it, he was a particular admirer of her performance; that his malady was his real misfortune, and that if he apprehended any return of it he would rather quit his seat than disoblige either the actor or the audience.’ Colley calls this the ‘publick decency’ of the French theatre. The Mdlle. Clairon, named above, took up the inheritance which her predecessor had resigned. Claire Joseph Hippolyte Legris de Latude were her names; but, out of the first, she made the name by which she became illustrious. Her life was a long one--1723-1803. She acted from childhood to middle age; first as sprightly maiden, then in opera, till Rouen discovered in her a grand _tragédienne_, and sent her up to Paris, which city ratified the warrant given by the Rouennais. She made her first appearance as Phèdre, and the Parisians at once worshipped the new and exquisite idol.