Of old the parts of women in the dance had been taken by men. Lully ventured to introduce female dancers. Here begins the epoch of famous “danseuses” who, in accordance with a natural law, become the centre of public interest. We owe to Castil Blaze a list of those _grandes dames_ who took up the profession. Henceforward the art of song and that of dancing divided equally the popular affection, for the two were not always separate callings. La Prévost was the first to essay a solo dance, which she set to a violin solo of Rebel. La Pélissier inaugurated costume-dances. She had purchased the whole wardrobe of Adrienne Lecouvreur, lately deceased, and was thus able to appear in the ballet “Le Carneval et la Folie,” in the characters of Jocasta, Mariamne, Zenobia, Chimène, Roxana, Paulina, Célimène, Agatha, and Elvira. Next we see rising the star of La Camargo, who from her début in the ballet “Caractères de la Danse,” was the amazement of the world, the discoverer of operatic airs set to the dance, the glass of fashion, the arbitress of mode, against whose decisions there was no appeal. But, as Castil Blaze tells us in his history of the French theatre, all were surpassed by La Sallé, with her noble figure, her lovely form, her perfect grace, her dancing so full of expression and voluptuous languor. Not only does she dance; she writes dances. She invents a Pygmalion, in which the divine statue assumes life, and engages in a long pantomime with the sculptor, who teaches her to assume her humanity by means of the measured motions of the dance. La Sallé brought this ballet on the stage in London first and then in Paris; and the London correspondent of the _Mercure de France_ writes to his paper of the extraordinary furore created by the new art. For Sallé had at last rejected the lingering relics of the old ballet--the anachronisms of costume--in order to be able to give full expression to the spirit of the dance. “She ventured,” says the correspondent, “to appear without skirt or bodice, with loose hair, and absolutely unadorned. Over corset and undergarments she had only a simple muslin dress, and seemed the very image of a Greek statue.” Sallé appears to have practised her dances without virtuosity, as a mere artistic representation. She essayed no acrobatic leaps, no _entrechats_, no pirouettes. Contrasting her with Camargo, Voltaire exclaimed:-- “Ah, Camargo, que vous êtes brillante! Mais que Sallé, grands dieux, est ravissante! Que vos pas sont légers, et que les siens sont doux! Elle est inimitable, et vous êtes nouvelle: Les Nymphes sautent comme vous, Et les Graces dansent comme elle.”