The life of Antoinette Clavel had been a peculiarly sad one; one long course of privation, misfortunes, disappointments, and disillusions. Born at Strasburg, on December 15, 1756, she was now in her twenty-first year. Her father, a musician, formerly a member of a French troupe in the service of the Elector Palatine, and, at the time of Antoinette’s birth, attached to the Strasburg theatre, had commenced his little daughter’s musical education before she was well out of the nursery. The child, like Sophie Arnould, early gave promise of exceptional talent. At the age of twelve, she sang to her own harpsichord accompaniment, “with so much taste and sweetness that she excited the admiration of all who heard her.” The fame of her precocious talent quickly spread abroad, and the managers of several foreign and provincial theatres offered her engagements. But her father and mother, “cherishing in her the germ of those virtues with which they had inspired her, had no mind to deliver her youth into distant towns, to the danger of seduction by those amiable and opulent men who delight in the criminal victories they achieve over innocence,” refused to allow her to appear, except at the Strasburg theatre, where “they were able to direct at its outset a career so slippery for a young and inexperienced girl.” Here she had the good fortune to attract the attention of the leader of the orchestra, Lemoine, a French composer who was later to achieve success in Paris. Lemoine, a kind-hearted and excellent man, gave the girl lessons and allotted her a part in a little piece of his own, _Le Bouquet de Colinette_. Never was there a more grateful pupil. In after years, Madame Saint-Huberty made the most heroic efforts to assure the success of the somewhat mediocre works of her first professor, of whose kindness to her when she was a child she could never speak without tears in her eyes. “I used to go to his house in the morning,” she related to one of her friends. “As it was cold and he was not well off, he remained in bed until the morning rehearsal, in order to save wood. When I arrived to take my lesson, I used to find him rolled up in his blankets, with a great woollen night-cap on his head, which reached to his eyes. ‘Ah! there you are, little one,’ he would say to me, and would throw me one of the blankets, in which I wrapped myself as well as I could. Then I used to sing, beating time with my feet with all my strength, in order to keep them warm. “In the evening, I accompanied my father to the theatre. Often I was a _figurante_, and Lemoine, who knew that we made but poor cheer at home, always contrived to give me some tit-bits, off which I might make a good supper. “My father was indebted to him for several pupils, who paid him fairly well. Finally, he presented us to Count Branicki, an immensely wealthy nobleman, at whose house plays were frequently performed.”[169]