At Easter 1679, in consequence of some dissensions with their colleagues, Mlle. de Champmeslé and her husband quitted the Hôtel de Bourgogne, where they had played for nineteen years, for the Théâtre Guénégaud, which, by a contract dated April 12, awarded them, "in gratitude," in addition to a full share of the profits, an annual allowance of one thousand livres. All her contemporaries are agreed that this defection was the principal cause of the fusion of the two troupes in the following year. Deprived of the services of the famous actress, the Hôtel de Bourgogne was no longer able to cope with its powerful rivals in the Rue Mazarine. On the formation of the new company, the Champmeslés figured at the head of the list of the twenty-seven players nominated by Louis XIV., and Mlle. Champmeslé was at once recognised as the mainstay of the theatre in tragedy, as Mlle. Molière--or rather Mlle. Guérin, as she had now become--was in comedy. Her husband, too, proved himself well worthy of his place, not only as an actor, but as a playwright. His _Parisien_ (produced February 5, 1682), as we have said elsewhere, provided Mlle. Guérin with one of her greatest triumphs, and he secured another success in his _Fragments de Molière_, an amusing piece, in which various characters from Molière's plays were introduced. Mlle. de Champmeslé's successes did not make her forget her relatives. Her brother, Nicolas Desmares, was at this time acting at Copenhagen, in the troupe subsidised by Christian V. That monarch held the actor and his wife, Anne d'Ennebaut, in high esteem, and, in 1682, in imitation of Louis XIV.'s conduct in regard to Molière, he and his queen stood sponsors to their little daughter, Christine Antoinette Charlotte Desmares, destined, in years to come, to emulate the triumphs of her famous aunt. Three years later, Mlle. de Champmeslé persuaded her brother to return to France, and obtained from the King permission for him to be received into the Comédie-Française, "_sans début_." For an actor to be admitted a member of so famous a company without being required to give proofs of his capabilities, was a privilege which had never yet been accorded, and the playgoing public was up in arms at what it was pleased to consider a scandalous piece of nepotism. So great was the indignation that when Desmares made his first appearance, on May 7, 1685, in _Téramène_, an angry scene was apprehended; but the new _sociétaire's_ acting was so admirable that the hisses were soon drowned in a storm of applause.