But Sophie was very far from confining her witticism to her comrades of the Opera; no one was safe from her shafts. When the intriguing old Duc de la Vauguyon, the Dauphin’s governor, who had done his best to sow dissension between that prince and Marie Antoinette, died, he was regretted by no one. The day after his death, the opera of _Castor et Pollux_ was played. In this piece there was a ballet of devils, which on this particular evening went all wrong, whereupon Sophie observed that the devils were so much upset by M. de la Vauguyon’s arrival among them that their heads were turned. M. de Boynes, who succeeded the Duc de Choiseul-Praslin as Minister of Marine, in 1760, was an honest and well-meaning man, but entirely ignorant of the duties of that important post. One evening he appeared at the Opera, where the scene on the stage represented a ship on a stormy sea. “Oh, how fortunate!” exclaimed Sophie. “He has come here to get some idea of the Navy.” Better perhaps was her remark about the Abbé Terrai, the detested Comptroller-General of Finance, whose expedients for raising money excited so much indignation in the last years of Louis XV. The abbé, who suffered from a defective circulation, was seen, one bitter winter’s day, with his hands hidden in a huge muff. “What need has he of a muff?” asked the actress. “Are not his hands always in our pockets?” The Ministers, indeed, seem to have been very favourite objects of Sophie’s sarcasm. On being shown a snuff-box, with the head of the Duc de Choiseul on one side, and that of Sully, the great Minister of Henri IV. on the other, she exclaimed: “_Tiens!_ they have put the receipts and the expenses together.” * * * * * The _liaison_ between Sophie and the Comte de Lauraguais was, as might be expected, from the singular character of the latter, not untroubled by storms. The count, though honestly attached to his mistress, was jealous, suspicious, headstrong, and passionate, always full of some new and frequently wild project or other, with which he expected her to sympathise, while the slightest opposition to his wishes was sufficient to throw him into such paroxysms of rage that it was dangerous to approach him.[21] At times, he led poor Sophie a terrible life, and over and over again she was on the point of leaving him. At last, in the autumn of 1761, after their irregular union had lasted about three years, it came temporarily to a close.