From these discreditable gallantries, it is a relief to turn to Madame Dugazon’s professional career, which, happily, seems to have been no more affected by the irregularities of her private life than those of Mlle. Clairon and Madeleine Guimard. The enthusiasm with which even the most fastidious of her contemporaries acclaim her talent is truly remarkable. “I have often,” writes Bouilly, “admired Madame Saint-Huberty, at the Opera, in lyric tragedy, Mlle. Raucourt in the masterpieces of our French stage, and the brilliant Mlle. Contat in comedy; but not one of these celebrated women united, in my opinion, that variety of perfections, that incomprehensible medley of pathos and gaiety, of nobleness and simplicity, of finesse and naturalness, which made Madame Dugazon admired in the different rôles wherein, in turn, she showed herself princess and peasant, soubrette and tender mother, _ingénue_ and coquette, wealthy woman and poor one. She seized with an admirable fidelity upon all the shades of Nature, all the movements of the human heart, all the inspirations of the most eager imagination.... One was, in turn, moved, ravished, transported; from tears the most abundant one passed to laughter the most irrepressible, from terror to gaiety the most natural and the most infectious; one passed, in a word, through all the windings of the human heart; one experienced all the sensations which leave a perfect remembrance. And this was the work of one woman, whose admirable intelligence did not cease to be the interpreter of Nature, whose talent, flexible and always natural, was cited by authors and friends of the art as the most perfect model possessed by our lyric stage.”[129] And Madame Vigée Lebrun says: “And now I come to her whose dramatic career I have followed from beginning to end, to the most perfect actress ever possessed by the Opéra-Comique, to Madame Dugazon. Hers was a natural talent, which owed nothing apparently to study. Noble, naïve, graceful, piquant, she had twenty faces, and always suited her accent to the person she represented at the time. Her voice was somewhat weak, but she adapted it equally well to tears, laughter, and every situation.”[130] That Madame Dugazon was far greater as an actress than as a vocalist there can, we think, be no question. The father of French _opéra-comique_, Grétry, gives it as his opinion that she was not a singer at all, but “an actress who _spoke song_ with the truest and most passionate expression.” And Boïeldieu, the author of _La Dame Blanche_, says much the same. “What an astonishing woman!” he exclaimed, after the first performance of _Le Calife de Bagdad_. “They say that she does not understand music; yet I never heard any one sing with such taste and expression, such nature and fidelity.”[131]