“She is a great musician,” writes La Ferté, in 1784, to Amelot, “abounding in talent and essential to the Academy. If Nature had not lavished upon her all the necessary qualifications, Art would have created a prodigy in her favour. This artiste is too well aware that she is necessary to the Opera, in default of persons who can replace her with advantage. She is full of pretensions; she has intelligence, but a bad disposition. She must be humoured, but not spoilt, otherwise she will make herself, so to speak, the sovereign arbitrix of the Opera.”[204] During a visit to Lyons, in 1785, where she was received with the same enthusiasm as elsewhere in the provinces, Madame Saint-Huberty conceived a violent fancy for the local tenor, one Saint-Aubin by name, who took the part of Énée in _Didon_, and did not rest content with making love to him on the stage. When her _congé_ expired, nothing would satisfy her but that the fascinating tenor should follow her to Paris, and no sooner had she returned to the capital than she persuaded the administration to engage him for the Opera, and an _ordre de début_ was accordingly despatched to Lyons: “_De Par Le Roi_: “The sieur Saint-Aubin, tenor of the Lyons theatre, is directed to come immediately to Paris, to make his _début_ on the stage of the Opera. “Executed at Paris, etc.” In vain did the management of the Lyons theatre represent that the services of the sieur Saint-Aubin could not possibly be dispensed with; that there was no one to replace him; that he had anticipated his salary to the extent of 3433 livres, 4 sols.; that the theatre, already in a bad way financially, would be completely ruined by his departure, and so forth. The authorities in Paris, spurred on by the amorous prima donna, were inexorable, and the sieur Saint-Aubin had to obey. He made his _début_ on December 9, 1785, as Atys, in Piccini’s opera of that name, and was pronounced by the critics a tolerably good singer, but far too stout for a lover--at least on the stage. After a year of love duets with Madame Saint-Huberty, the passion of the stout tenor began to cool. The husband awoke in him; he remembered that he had left at Lyons a young and charming wife and two pretty children, and manifested a strong inclination to rejoin them. Fearful of losing her lover altogether, the prima donna resigned herself to sharing him with another, and a second imperious summons, in the King’s name, brought to Paris the young wife and the two children. And that is how Madame Saint-Aubin, afterwards a great attraction at the Opéra-Comique, was introduced to the Paris stage.