The pride of Mlle. Clairon, in those days, knew no bounds. "Madame de Pompadour," said she, one day, "owes her sovereignty to chance; I owe mine to the power of my genius!" She treated even the most distinguished of her colleagues with haughty disdain, and often with the grossest discourtesy; and poor Mlle. Dangeville, the object of her childish adoration and the most sweet-tempered and inoffensive of women, retired from the stage ten years earlier than she would otherwise have done, vowing that it was "impossible to live any longer with such a creature." As for the younger actresses, they positively trembled before her; while, with the exception of Voltaire, whose admiration for her she condescended to reciprocate, there is said to have been not a single dramatic author of the time whom she had not insulted. The public she appears to have regarded very much as a queen might her subjects. On the occasion of a free performance at the Comédie, given by order of the King, she came on to the stage between the two pieces and threw handfuls of silver into the pit; and the worthy Parisians, quite gulled by this piece of theatrical quackery, cried, as they scrambled for the money, "_Vive le Roi et Mlle. Clairon!_" Nevertheless, in spite of her arrogance and absurd pretensions, Mlle. Clairon had the interests of her profession sincerely at heart. She was, according to her own expression, the _chargé-d'affaires_, the advocate, and the postillion of the Comédie-Française, and it was always to her that her comrades turned when in any difficulty or perplexity. It was through her influence, joined to that of the Comte de Lauraguais, that the absurd custom of allowing the more distinguished members of the audience seats upon the stage itself--a custom which seriously hampered the movements of the players and was utterly destructive of all scenic illusion--was finally abolished. A word from her was sufficient to secure the payment of the overdue royal pension to the Comédie, which the _semainiers_ had vainly solicited from the Comptroller-General; and she laboured zealously, if unsuccessfully, to free her profession from the ban of the Church, which had weighed so long and so heavily upon it.