Let us recall for a moment Gluck’s connection with the French _opéra bouffon_. Favart had complimented him, in a letter to the Vienna opera director Durazzo, for the excellence of his French ‘déclamation.’ Evidently Gluck and his friend Le Blanc du Roullet, attaché of the French embassy, had kept track of the _Guerre des bouffons_, and had taken advantage of the psychology of the moment, for Rameau had died in 1764 and the consequent weakening of the National party had resulted in the victory of the Buffonists. Du Roullet suggested to Gluck and Calzabigi that they collaborate upon a French subject for an opera, and chose Racine’s _Iphigénie_. The opera was completed and the text translated by du Roullet, who now wrote a very diplomatic letter to the authorities of the Académie royale (the Paris opera). It recounted how the Chevalier Gluck, celebrated throughout Europe, admired the French style of composition, preferred it, indeed, to the Italian; how he regarded the French language as eminently suited to musical treatment, and that he had just finished a new work in French on a tragedy of the immortal Racine, which exhausted all the powers of art, simple, natural song, enchanting melody, recitative equal to the French, dance pieces of the most alluring freshness. Here was everything to delight a Frenchman’s heart; besides, his opera had been a great financial success in Bologna, and so valiant a defender of the French tongue should be given an opportunity in its own home. The academy saw a new hope in this. It considered the letter in official session, and cautiously asked to see an act of _Iphigénie_. After examination of it Gluck was promised an engagement if he would agree to write six operas like it. This condition, almost impossible of acceptance for a man of Gluck’s age, was finally removed through the intercession of Marie Antoinette, now dauphiness of France, Gluck’s erstwhile pupil in Vienna. Gluck was invited to come to Paris as the guest of the Académie and direct the staging of _Iphigénie_. He arrived there with his wife and niece[14] in the summer of 1773. Lodged in the citadel of the anti-Buffonists, he incurred in advance the opposition of the Italian party, but, diplomat that he was, he at once set about to propitiate the enemy. Rousseau, the intellectual potentate of France, was eventually won over; but, despite the fact that Gluck’s music was essentially human and should have fulfilled the demands of the ‘encyclopedists,’ such men as Marmontel, La Harpe, and d’Alambert were arrayed against him, together with the entire Italian party and many of the followers of the old French school, who refused to accept him as the successor of Lully and Rameau. Mme. du Barry was one of these. Marie Antoinette, on the other hand, constituted herself Gluck’s protector. It was the _Guerre des bouffons_ at its climax.