particularly when the gifted hostess desired to obtain the inestimable benefit of the great tragedian's interpretation of her mediocre Cleopatras and Judiths; but the salons of the Faubourg were shut against her for ever, and, on her second visit to England, she found an appreciable difference in the warmth of the reception accorded to her in private circles. The critics now talked of her as grasping, sensual, and selfish. "Her grand reserved manner, snatched up as a dress," writes one, "could be flung down by her as such at any moment."
All the base envies and jealousies before and behind the scenes were used as weapons against her, and she was subjected to the basest persecution. Sometimes the young lioness rose in her wrath, and we see her retaliating on her tormentors, as in the letter given above, or using the cutting lash of irony, at which she was so skilled an adept, as in the taunts she addresses to Charles Maurice. She was generous in her animosities, however. During the coup d'état, this latter critic, who had frequently treated her with equal severity, was gravely compromised. She heard of it, and never rested for two whole days until she had restored him to liberty, "to write against her still."
