Bacchus_ was given before the king in which the Duke of Monmouth was associated with seven French nobles. When Molière's company of comedians left the theatre of the Palais Royal in 1673, Lulli's "Academy" was established in their place, and the Palais Royal Theatre became the Royal Opera House until 1787, with an interval caused by the rebuilding after the fire of 1763. In 1697 the Italians were forbidden to perform any more in Paris, and French opera enjoyed a monopoly of royal favour, until the Regent recalled the Italians in 1716. The Académie de Musique, or French Opera, subsequently migrated to the Salle d'Opéra, at the Hôtel Louvois, on the site of the present Square Louvois. It was in this house that the Duke of Berri was assassinated in 1820. The Government decreed the demolition of the building, and an opera house was hurriedly erected in the Rue Lepelletier. This inconvenient, stuffy Hall of the Muses, so familiar to the older generation of opera-goers, was at length superseded by the present luxurious temple in 1874. [Illustration: ARC DE TRIOMPHE.] The early French operas were of the nature of elaborate ballets, based invariably on mythological subjects, and, indeed, the ballet up to recent times, when the reforming influence of Wagner's music-dramas made itself felt, has always formed the more important part of every operatic performance. Only when the curtain rose on the _scènes de ballet_ did chatter cease, for as Taine remarked, "_Le public ne se trouve émoustillé que par le ballet_" ("The public only brightens up at the ballet"), and the traditional habit of Society was expressed in the formula, "_On n'écoute que le ballet_" ("One only listens to the ballet"). Molière wrote a tragédie-ballet, a pastorale heroique, a pastorale comique, and eight comédies-ballets, in one of which, _Le Sicilian_, the king himself, the Marquis of Villeroi and other courtiers performed with Molière and his daughter. In 1681 the permission already given to the princes and other nobles to take part in the ballets without derogation was extended to the ladies of the court, who in that year performed the _Triomphe de l'Amour_. The innovation proved most successful, and soon affected the public stage, where, as at the court, up to that period male performers alone were tolerated. Mdlle. de la Fontaine was the first of the famous _danseuses_ of the Paris opera, and her portrait, with those of some score of her successors, still adorn the _foyer de la danse_. The opera was a social rather than a musical function, and the old _foyer_, until the fall of the Second Empire, was the favourite meeting-place during the season of royal and distinguished personages, courtiers, ministers, ambassadors, and, indeed, of all French society of the male persuasion. Such was the passion for the opera during the reign of Louis XVI. that fashionable devotees would journey from Brussels to Paris in time to see the curtain