[34] He was the architect of Bagatelle, in the Bois de Boulogne, which he built for the Comte d’Artois, and designed the gardens of the Château de Meréville (Seine-et-Oise) and of Belœil, in Belgium, the seat of the Prince de Ligne. Extant specimens of his work are the hôtel built for Mlle. Contat, at the corner of the Rue de Berri, in the Champs-Elysées, and the dome of the old Halle aux Blés, now the Bourse du Commerce. [35] One which accused her of practising the shameful vices of antiquity. _See_ E. and J. de Goncourt’s _Sophie Arnould_, p. 86 _et seq._ [36] Madame du Barry was, however, amply avenged. Sophie’s comrades of the theatre, scarcely one of whom but had suffered from her sarcastic tongue, were not slow to avail themselves of so excellent an opportunity of paying their tormentor back in her own coin, and, for some time afterwards, never failed to let fall the odious word “_Hôpital_” whenever Mlle. Arnould happened to be within earshot; a proceeding which, Bachaumont tells us, “no doubt greatly humiliated that superb queen of opera.” [37] _Mémoires secrets_, vi. 136. [38] Eighteenth-century composers appear to have been continually tinkering with this unfortunate opera, one of the most popular of the famous Lulli-Quinault series. When it was revived in January 1759, La Borde, Louis XV.’s musical _valet-de-chambre_, made various alterations in the music, “which disgusted equally the partisans of the old and the new schools.” In November 1771, Berton, one of the directors of the Opera, substituted some very inferior melodies of his own, which, if possible, were even less to the taste of the audience, and, eight years later, Johann Christian Bach, the eleventh son of the celebrated master, tried his hand at the score, likewise without success. [39] This was one of the most successful of Sophie’s “creations.” The piece, the libretto of which had been adapted by Sedaine from a _conte_ of the Chevalier de Boufflers, published in 1761, was played twenty-six times in succession, an unusually long run in those days. [40] The _Mercure_ is lavish in its praise of Sophie’s rendering of Colin, the boy’s part, in Jean Jacques Rousseau’s _Devin du Village_, in which she appeared in December 1767. But Mr. Douglas thinks that her performance was less successful than that rather partial organ declared it to be. At all events, he says, she did not repeat the experiment, and was always extremely sarcastic if any of her fellow actresses undertook masculine parts. Mlle. Allard, whose innumerable _galanteries_ had astonished, and almost shocked, even the nymphs of the Opera, one day happened to remark, after playing such a part, that she believed that half the audience really thought she was a boy. “But the other half _knew_ you were not, _ma chère_,” observed Sophie. [41] Mr. Ernest Newman, “Gluck and the Opera,” p. 133. [42] _Gluck et Piccini_, p. 89. [43] Rousseau, _La Nouvelle Héloïse_.