257.—AN ERRATIC PRIMA DONNA.
One of the "freaks" of the operatic stage was a lady who was before the public in the time of Lulli, and who bore the name of Madam La Maupin. This versatile lady was given to all sorts of questionable pranks, such as would hardly be tolerated in the present century.
Having secretly learned the art of fencing, she proceeded to seek an opportunity to put her skill to use. She declared a certain opera singer had insulted her; and, donning male attire, she lay in wait for him as he left the theater one night, and challenged him to draw his sword and defend himself. But the fellow was a coward and refused to fight; so she demanded his money and jewelry and then gave him a sound thrashing. The next day when this brave gentleman was boasting to some friends how he had been attacked by three robbers and how he had put them to flight, she coolly produced the plunder and told the whole story.
When only sixteen, this adventuress ran off from her husband and proceeded with a new admirer to Marseilles, where she appeared on the stage in masculine attire; and so good a looking man did she make that one young lady in the audience fell violently in love with her. La Maupin, keeping up her disguise, encouraged the love smitten damsel, and the affair grew so serious that the girl's parents placed her in a convent to remove her from the influence of this captivating suitor.
But La Maupin was not so easily frustrated. Donning her proper attire, she applied at the convent for admission and finally was received as a novice, and thus kept up her intimacy with her admirer, who thought her assumption of feminine attire a disguise. But convent life soon lost its attractions for this uncertain person and she quickly hit on a scheme that permitted them both to escape. One of the nuns having just died and having been buried on the grounds, La Maupin, disinterred the poor lady, placed her remains in the infatuated girl's bed; then she set fire to the dormitory and in the confusion which followed they both made their escape. Then tiring of the part she was playing, she discovered her sex to her admirer and sent her home to her mother, sadder, and perhaps wiser.