In the immediate neighbourhood of the Comédie Française was born Adrienne Lecouvreur. Less perhaps from the influence of the _genius loci_ than from a desire to imitate the actors and actresses whom, from day to day, she must have seen passing her door, little Adrienne accustomed herself at an early age to act plays and scenes from plays with her young companions. Adrienne's talent was soon noticed by an inferior actor named Legrand, who, after teaching her some of the tricks of his trade, procured an engagement for her somewhere in Alsace. It was in the provinces that she formed her style; and for so long a time did she wander about from theatre to theatre that she was already twenty-seven years of age when an engagement was offered her at the Comédie Française. Here she was equally successful in tragedy and in comedy, though in the latter line her impersonations seem to have been chiefly confined to high comedy. Thus one of her best parts was that of Célimène in the _Misanthrope_. Adrienne was well acquainted with Voltaire when Count Maurice de Saxe, one of the innumerable natural children of Augustus II., King of Poland--Carlyle's Augustus the Strong--came to try his fortune in Paris. This was in the year 1720. In the first instance he met with no luck; and he had to wait a considerable time before he could get a simple regiment together. "Although he was scarcely twenty-four years of age," says a remarkable writer of the time, "Maurice had already made eleven campaigns and repudiated one wife. He joined," continues this unconscious humourist, "to the strength of his father the uncultured youth and fiery disposition of a sort of nomad, somewhat like our Du Guesclin, whom ladies used to call the wild boar. Under the guise of a Sarmatian, Adrienne discovered the hero, and undertook to polish the soldier. She was then thirty years of age, and had gained the experience and the passion which render a woman alike skilful to please and prompt to love." Adrienne Lecouvreur was carried off, after a short and somewhat mysterious illness, on the 20th of March, 1730. So sudden was her death that the public, who adored her, would not believe that it arose from natural causes; and the Duchess de Bouillon, known to be her rival and her implacable enemy, was declared by everyone to be her murderess. According to the story current at the time she owed her death to a box of poisoned sweetmeats, treacherously presented to her, though Scribe and Legouvé, in their well-known play, make her die from the effect of a poisoned bouquet given to her by the duchess, in feigned admiration of her genius. All that is really known on the subject is to be found in the "Memoirs" of the Abbé Annillon, the "Letters" of Mdlle. Aïssé, and a note appended to one of these letters by Voltaire himself.