Note 196 — Front matter (continued 6)

She refused first, the protection, and, afterwards, the hand of the Marquis de Gouffier, the latter on the ground that "while esteeming herself too much to be his mistress, she esteemed herself too little to be his wife." On her retirement from the stage in 1783, Louis XVI. granted her a special pension, "as if to show that virtue under his reign was as profitable as vice had been under his predecessor."—Hawkins, "The French Stage in the Eighteenth Century," ii. 107 and 299.