The tears, the applause, baffled all description. Six times at the conclusion of the play was the “sublime lunatic” recalled. The public could not applaud enough, and at each performance the enthusiasm increased; it seemed inexhaustible. Every evening the doors of the theatre were besieged by an enormous crowd. “Men went thither to be moved by the sorrows which were able to cause such abandon, women to seek emotions and the secret of tears.” Not an evening passed without some lady in the audience swooning with emotion. Madness became on a sudden the fashionable disease. In the salons a host of young women found occupation in playing the part of Nina, and some of them appeared to have worked themselves into a condition bordering on lunacy. The critics essayed in vain to combat this ridiculous infatuation. They pronounced the subject monstrous, the libretto insipid, the music detestable, and loudly bewailed the decay of art upon the stage. They might have saved their paper and ink. The public continued to applaud and to weep, and the receipts of the Comédie-Italienne to increase. “It seemed,” remarks one of the lady’s biographers, “that each spectator was of the opinion of an enthusiast who, on the evening of the first representation, improvised the following verses in honour of Nina-Dugazon: “‘Tous les cœurs sont émus à tes divins accords, On ne sait qu’admirer, ton génie ou tes charmes. Tu pleures, aussitôt tu fais couler mes larmes: Qui donc resterait froid à tes brûlants transports? Mais la toile se baisse et la pièce est finie, Aussitôt cesse ta folie, Mais moi, d’amour pour toi perdre la raison.’”[138] The provinces, in their turn, desired to witness this wonderful work and to applaud the idolised actress; and Madame Dugazon, accordingly, paid a visit to Lyons, where a magnificent reception awaited her. Such was the enthusiasm she evoked that her admirers would have liked to raise a triumphal arch in her honour, but, as the city authorities did not quite see their way to gratify this desire, they were fain to content themselves with composing verses in her praise, which were read upon the stage, crowning her with flowers, and applauding until the rafters rang. On her return to Paris, Madame Dugazon found herself, if it were possible, more the rage than ever, and so completely did her popularity eclipse that of her rivals, that, on the evenings on which she did not appear, the directors of the Comédie-Italienne--that nursery of pretty women--had the mortification to see the boxes empty and their theatre a desert. Their consternation, therefore, may be imagined when, towards the end of that year, the lady, without a moment’s warning, set out for London.