Mlle. Raucourt’s reinstatement at the Comédie-Française was more easily proposed than accomplished. The majority of her former colleagues opposed it most strenuously, on the ground that their statutes prohibited the readmission of a player who had been excluded by a vote of the _sociétaires_, and that the misconduct of the actress in question had injured the company in the estimation of the public. The Gentlemen of the Chamber, however, turned a deaf ear to their remonstrances. Marie Antoinette, a great admirer of Mlle. Raucourt’s acting, and ever ready to take the part of any of her sex whom she considered to have been hardly treated, espoused her cause, and even talked of paying her debts, and on September 11, 1779, the _Journal de Paris_ contained the following announcement: “Comédie-Française.--We understand that the demoiselle Raucourt, absent from this theatre for three years, will reappear there this evening, in the rôle of Dido.” Dido, it will be remembered, was the part in which the actress had made her sensational _début_, seven years before; and the recollection of the triumph she had secured on that occasion had doubtless influenced her choice of this rôle. Now, as then, the doors of the theatre were besieged, and the _salle_ crowded to its utmost capacity. But alas! how different were the feelings which animated the expectant audience! Mlle. Raucourt had been thrust upon the town in defiance of feelings which ought to have been respected; night after night the pit had clamoured for Mlle. Sainval, and, in her stead, it had been given--Raucourt! And to make matters worse, it was an open secret that the Court intended to pay her debts “out of the people’s money.” Long before the curtain rose, angry murmurs heralded the coming storm, and the moment Dido appeared, it burst in all its fury. The uproar was indescribable. Hisses, groans, and cat-calls came from all parts of the pit. The grossest epithets, the most shocking abuse, were showered upon the unfortunate actress. “It was impossible,” says one account, “to hear a single word of her part. The other actors were allowed to speak, but so soon as her turn arrived, the clamour began again. It is suspected that the partisans of the demoiselles Sainval are no strangers to this fermentation.” Even more violent was the hostility displayed when, two nights later, Mlle. Raucourt appeared as Phèdre. All who are familiar with Racine’s famous tragedy know that the part of the hapless heroine contains many lines which may be readily applied to her impersonator by a hostile audience, and, in electing to play it, Mlle. Raucourt furnished her enemies with weapons of which they did not fail to make the very fullest use. The well-known lines once addressed by Adrienne Lecouvreur to her rival and would-be assassin, the Duchesse de Bouillion: