ABSTRACT
Following her arrest in Bordeaux in August 1769, which ended her stage career there, Jodin returned to Paris to live with her mother, as she said: ‘in the bosom of my family’.1 They took up residence in an apartment in the Faubourg SaintGermain, rue Bourbon Chateau, near to Diderot’s lodgings, rue Taranne. For the next five years she seems to have followed Diderot’s prescription for a rational and healthy life, the eighteenth-century ‘happy-man’ motif, sketched out in his letter of 10 February 1769: ‘A little apartment with good air in a quiet comer of the city, a healthy and sober diet, a few reliable friends, a little reading, music, a great deal of exercise ... ’. His wish that she should care for her mother and other needy relatives had bome fruit. She maintained her theatre contacts, particularly at the Comedie-Frangaise. She was also free to pursue her intellectual interests. Yet in spite of the fact that Jodin was now financially independent and could afford to leave the stage which had led her into so many scrapes, we will see that the theatre remained an enormous attraction.
