The young bride was very speedily enlightened as to her husband’s real character and the motives which had led him to make her his wife. “The third night of our marriage,” she says, in a memoir which she subsequently drew up for an annulment of the union, “was marked by the grossest language on the part of the sieur Croisilles, accompanied by a pair of sound boxes on the ear, because the counterpane was more on my side than his.” And, a few weeks later, Saint-Huberty secretly quitted Berlin, carrying off everything of value that his wife possessed.
From Berlin, whence the too-pressing attentions of his creditors had been the cause of his abrupt departure, M. Saint-Huberty made his way to Warsaw, from which city he presently wrote to his wife, informing her that he had just formed an operatic company, whose first performance had been warmly applauded at the Polish Court, and that her assistance alone was wanting to make it worthy to perform before the sovereigns of the North.
The rascal’s pen must have been as persuasive as his tongue, since Antoinette at once decided to rejoin her husband. She arrived at Warsaw, only to find that the company which was supposed to have already achieved such great things had, as a matter of fact, never given anything but rehearsals. Finally, however, it gave its first performance in public and, thanks to the efforts of the young singer, appears to have made a very favourable impression.
Intoxicated with his success, Saint-Huberty determined to extend the scope of his operations and establish his troupe on a permanent basis. With this end in view, he started for Hamburg, “in search of suitable recruits,” after which he had the imprudence to visit Berlin. It was to venture into the lion’s den. Scarcely had he set foot in the town, than he was recognised, arrested, and thrown into prison, where his creditors announced their intention of keeping him until he should have paid the uttermost pfenning.
The troupe which he had left at Warsaw, deprived of its director and its salaries, for we may presume that M. Saint-Huberty had taken most of its available cash with him, found itself in a parlous condition. In the meantime, however, Antoinette had scored a great personal triumph in the opera of _Zémire et Azor_, when the reception she met with must have exceeded her fondest anticipations. Warsaw, in those days, was essentially a city of pleasure; and its upper classes prided themselves on following the manners and modes of Paris. The Opera was especially high in favour, and, as the public was not very discriminating and lavishly generous to those who earned its approbation, artistes of very mediocre talent, who in Paris would have been accounted fortunate to be received in nothing worse than silence, found themselves lauded to the skies and loaded with gifts. The enthusiasm evoked by Madame Saint-Huberty’s singing found vent in numerous valuable presents being made to the artiste, who was thus enabled to realise a sum of 12,000 livres, wherewith she proceeded to release her worthless husband from his Prussian dungeon. That gentleman, accordingly, returned to Warsaw; but his creditors in the Polish capital, encouraged by the success which had attended the proceedings of their fellow victims in Berlin, assumed so threatening an attitude that, after a brief period of repose, he judged it expedient to resume his travels, and, one fine night, suddenly disappeared.