Delomel, but by 1789 attendance had declined, and he was in serious financial difficulties. Théâtre Montansier In October 1789 a revolutionary mob forcibly evicted the royal family from the Palace of Versailles and compelled them to move to Paris. Mademoiselle Montansier, who had been the manager of the theatre at Versailles, as well as several other court theatres, followed the king and queen. Needing a theatre near the court's new location at the Palais des Tuileries, and learning of Delomel's situation, she swiftly used her royal connections to acquire his lease. Delomel was evicted in January 1790, after which he transferred his troupe on 22 February to the Théâtre des Élèves de l'Opéra on the Boulevard du Temple, where eventually for lack of adequate receipts he was forced to close permanently on 7 March 1791. Under the name Théâtre Montansier, the theatre in the Palais-Royal reopened on 12 April 1790 with the three-act comic opera Les Epoux mécontents (Gli sposi malcontenti) with music by Storace and a new libretto by Dubuisson. On 30 September the company presented the play Le Sourd, ou L'Auberge pleine, a 3-act comedy by P. J. B. Desforges. It was a major success becoming the most performed play of the Revolution with over 450 performances, 251 at Montansier's theatre alone, where it eventually earned around 500,000 francs, a substantial amount of money for the time. The theatre began presenting Italian operas in French translation, successfully competing with, and gaining the enmity of the Opéra which had been exiled at the suburban Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin since 1781. Almost immediately ticket sales began to outstrip the capacity of her theatre. The stage and the seating area were so small, that the Almanach des spectacles thought "the theatre too small, the actors too large". During the two-week Easter break of 1791, Montansier hired Victor Louis to enlarge the stage and the auditorium. The capacity of the house was increased to 1300 spectators, and the height and depth of the stage were doubled. As the Revolution progressed, Montansier was anonymously accused in political pamphlets, called libelles, of debauchery in her relations with her lover and partner Honoré Bourdon de Neuville, and in her previous associations with Marie Antoinette. Later she was accused of concealing weapons intended for counterrevolutionary activities. Montansier attempted to counteract these rumours and accusations, and let it be known her sympathies lay with the new