Like nearly all the members of her profession, Mlle. Contat was exceedingly charitable, and this fact no doubt contributed not a little to the immense popularity which she enjoyed with the playgoing public. At Lyons, on one occasion, she gave a performance for the benefit of the poor of the city, which realised between three and four thousand livres. At Toulouse, where the ten performances originally arranged for had failed to satisfy the enthusiasm of the public, she gave an eleventh, and distributed the proceeds amidst the poor of Baréges, whither she was proceeding to take the waters. Once, when visiting an asylum for persons who had been born blind, to converse with the inmates and inscribe her name on the list of benefactors, she was the recipient of a pretty compliment from a blind poet, who improvised a quatrain, in which he gallantly informed her that she should not so much pity those who had lost their eyes, as those who had been made wretched by the lustre of her own: “Digne soutien de l’amiable Thalie, Sur notre sort pourquoi vous attendrir, S’il est quelques mortels qui maudissent la vie, Ce sont que vos yeux ont réduits à souffrir...” By right of her beauty, her talent, and her successes, Mlle. Contat believed herself invested with the right of imposing her will upon her comrades and dramatic authors. With the latter she was frequently at variance. During the rehearsals of Alexandre Duval’s _Edouard en Écosse_, she demanded some alteration in one of the scenes. The author refused, declaring that the alteration in question would upset all his combinations, and, on the actress insisting on his compliance with her views, appealed to the other players, who, however, maintained a discreet silence, having no mind to contradict their imperious comrade. Beside herself with passion, the latter threw her part at the author’s head, “swearing by all her gods that nothing should induce her to act in any piece of his.” Duval, thereupon, took his manuscript from the hands of the prompters, and stalked out of the theatre, coldly observing that unless the piece was to be played as he had written it, it should not be played at all. A reconciliation between actress and author was subsequently effected, and the play produced, but, some time later, Duval offended the lady beyond all hope of forgiveness, by daring to offer to Madame Talma a part which she had marked for her own.[159] Mlle. Contat’s jealousy, indeed, caused her to be anything but beloved by her fair comrades at the Comédie-Française. Like Madame Saint-Huberty at the Opera, she could not endure a rival on the stage. She absolutely refused to be doubled, and, even when illness prevented her appearing, it was only with the greatest difficulty that she could be persuaded to allow any one to replace her.