Four days after her appearance in _Sylvain_, Mlle. Lefèvre was received _à l’essai_, with a salary of 1800 livres, which, in the following April, was increased to 2400 livres. But promotion was slow in those days, even for the most brilliant talents, and it was not until April 7, 1776, that she became a _sociétaire_.[128] But long before this--almost, indeed, from the evening on which she had first played Pauline--the public had taken her to its heart. People seemed never tired of lauding “her sympathetic voice, her exquisite sensibility, her gaiety, which was so contagious, her acting, which was so tender and impassioned.” Some enthusiasts even went so far as to declare that such remarkable talent must be the product of some divine inspiration. Mlle. Lefèvre was not strictly beautiful, but “adorably pretty,” dainty, and refined. She had delicate features, a mobile face, “and an expressive mouth, sometimes mocking, sometimes pouting.” But her greatest charm seems to have been her splendid eyes, fringed with long lashes, which, in turn, “shone with mischief and gaiety, or closed in order to allow the soft tears to flow.” Her figure, we are told, “without being tall, was well-proportioned, and all her movements were characterised by a peculiar charm.” Naturally, she was speedily surrounded by a throng of adorers. No actress of the time was so sought after, courted, adulated. “Jupiters of all conditions solicited the honour of descending at her feet in a shower of gold.” The most brilliant propositions were made to her: furnished hôtels, gorgeous equipages, ravishing toilettes, parures of diamonds, together with the hearts, if not the hands, of the noblest in the land, were at her disposal. She repulsed them all; she had decided to marry--to marry in her own profession. And her choice fell upon Dugazon, of the Comédie-Française. A singular character was this Dugazon. Born at Marseilles, in 1749, he made his first appearance on the Paris stage in 1771, and at once succeeded in ingratiating himself with his audience. Handsome and well made, he united to a profound knowledge of his art and a wealth of humour, a physiognomy of extraordinary flexibility, which he could so change at any moment that it seemed as if he had put on a mask. “By the play or the contraction of certain muscles of his face, he possessed the faculty of disfiguring himself instantly and so completely as to become unrecognisable.” There can be no question that he was a great comedian, though his style was in the spirit of farce rather than of comedy, and by the side of Préville, who, with all his vivacity, never condescended to what was low or trivial, he must have appeared a mere caricaturist. But in broad comedy he was unsurpassed, and in the farces of Scarron and Le Grand, as Scapin in the _Fourberies_, Monsieur Jourdain in the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, Mascarille in _l’Étourdi_, and Sganerelle in _Don Juan_, no actor of the time could even approach him.