Despite her extravagance Gabrielli had
a good heart. She gave largely in charity, and never forgot her parents.
Having by degrees lost both voice and beauty, Gabrielli retired finally
to Bologna in 1780, and died there in April, 1796, at the age of
sixty-six.

In the room in Paris in which the unfortunate Admiral Coligny had been
murdered, was born on February 14, 1744, the beautiful, witty, but
dissipated Sophie Arnould. At the age of twelve her voice, which was
remarkable for power and purity, attracted the attention of the Princess
de Modena, through whose influence she was engaged to sing in the king's
chapel. In 1757 she made her first appearance in opera, when her beauty
and her acting enabled her to carry everything before her.

The opera was besieged whenever her name was announced, and all the
gentlemen of Paris contested for the honor of throwing bouquets at her
feet. At length she eloped with Count Lauraguais, a handsome, dashing
young fellow, full of wit and daring. Her home resembled a little court,
of which she was the reigning sovereign, and her salon was always
crowded by men of the highest distinction. When Benjamin Franklin
arrived in Paris, he confessed that nowhere did he find such pleasure,
such wit, such brilliancy, as in the salon of Mlle. Arnould. She
remained faithful to her lover for four years, when he bestowed on her a
life-pension of 2,000 crowns. While she never spared any one in the
exercise of her wit, she was occasionally the subject of ridicule
herself, as, for instance, when the Abbe Galiani was asked his opinion
of her singing, and replied, "It is the finest asthma I ever heard."

Sophie Arnould appeared in several of Gluck's operas, and acquitted
herself to the satisfaction of the composer. Her voice had not
apparently fulfilled early expectations, but her beauty and her acting
made her a success. When Voltaire one day said to her, "Ah,
mademoiselle, I am eighty-four years old, and I have committed
eighty-four follies," she replied, "A mere trifle; I am not yet forty,
and I have committed more than a thousand."

In 1792 she purchased the presbytere of Clignancourt, Luzarches
(Seine-et-Oise). She had a fortune of 30,000 livres and innumerable
friends, but in less than two years she had lost her fortune, and her
friends being dispersed by exile, imprisonment, and the scaffold during
the Revolution, she was reduced to the lowest stage of poverty. She went
to Paris and sought an int