In spite of this encouraging notice,[173] the newcomer appears to have attracted but little attention, in the midst of an event of such importance as a new work by Gluck. Who, after all, was this modest _débutante_, beside such stars as Legros, Larrivée, Gélin, Rosalie Levasseur, and Mlle. Duranceray?
On first arriving in Paris, Madame Saint-Huberty had lodged in the Rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie, at the house of a dame Sorel, after which we find her residing successively at the Hôtel de Genève, the Hôtel de Bayonne, and the Hôtel des Treize-Provinces.[174] At all these places she lived alone, for, though her worthless husband had followed her to Paris, she very prudently refused to receive him back, until she was assured that he had mended his ways. As, however, he had no means of livelihood, and she could not allow him to starve, she obtained for him, through the good offices of Gluck, the post of wardrobe-keeper at the Opera, which, as one of her biographers very sensibly remarks, was scarcely a proper appointment for a gentleman with a weakness for carrying off other people’s garments and raising money upon them. M. Saint-Huberty was, as a matter of fact, very speedily discharged, upon which he revenged himself by hawking about the streets and “reading aloud in the cafés and even in certain private houses to which he was admitted,” a libellous pamphlet against the authorities of the Opera, composed by a confederate named Dodé de Jousserand. In order to keep himself in funds, he paid frequent visits to his unhappy wife, from whom he did not hesitate, when argument failed, to extort money by threats and even blows; while, when she had nothing to give him, he would seize upon any saleable article which happened to catch his eye, and carry it off. One day, while Madame Saint-Huberty was at the theatre, he swooped down and made a clear sweep of all the portable property of the luckless singer, who was compelled to lay a complaint against him before the commissary of police of her quarter. Here is the text of this document:
“In the year seventeen hundred and seventy-eight, Friday, the thirty-first of July, at nine o’clock of the evening, in the hôtel, and before us Joseph Chesnon _fils_, advocate to the Parliament, counsellor of the King, commissary to the Châlelet of Paris, appeared demoiselle Anne Antoinette Clavel, called Saint-Huberty, King’s pensioner at the Opera, who informed us that the sieur de Saint-Huberty, who claims to be married to her, in virtue of a pretended act of celebration in Berlin, has abused the confidence of the complainant for nearly three years, in order to install himself in her abode and to remain there in spite of her; to make himself master there, and even to maltreat her. He, nevertheless, several times left the house, but always carried away with him jewels and other property of the complainant, which he pledged and sold. He would again force his way in, but with empty hands, and the complainant was unable to do anything against such persecution, being without her papers.[175] Finally, this same day, while she was at the Opera, the sieur Saint-Huberty has again taken advantage of her confidence and her absence to carry off the goods, papers, and music of the complainant, including even music which belongs to the Opera.