According to a report of a police-inspector named Marais, published for the first time in the _Revue rétrospective_ (vol. viii.), the real name of this famous _danseuse_ was Marie Morel, and she was the natural daughter of a Jew named Bernard, who died at the Châtelet, where he had been imprisoned for debt, and a girl named Morel, of good bourgeois family. There is no truth in this report, however, save so far as the illegitimacy of the lady is concerned, as, from the registers of the parish of Bonne-Nouvelle de Paris, it appears that she was the daughter of one Fabien Guimard, inspector of the cloth manufactories at Voiron, in Dauphiné, and of Marie Anne Bernard, and that she was born in the Rue de Bourbon-Villeneuve, December 27, 1743.[68] The _acte de naissance_ describes Marie Anne Bernard as the _wife_ of Fabien Guimard, but, though she called herself by the name of the father of her child, they were, as a matter of fact, never married, as M. Campardon discovered in the Archives Nationales a deed legitimating the _danseuse_, bearing date December 1765, without doubt consented to by Guimard, in order to secure his daughter’s succession to his property.[69] In this deed, the demoiselle Marie Madeleine Guimard, making profession of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, declares that she was born of the illegitimate connection which formerly existed between the sieur Fabien Guimard, inspector of the cloth manufactories at Voiron, and the deceased Anne Bernard, her father and mother being both then free and unmarried; but that, in the misfortune of her birth, she has had the good fortune to be educated with great care, and that her father being desirous of continuing the marks of tenderness and personal affection that he has always manifested for her, and wishing to assure her his property, has consented, in conjunction with his brother, priest and canon of the diocese of Orléans, to accord to her letters of legitimation, for the purpose of effacing the stain of her birth and giving her the enjoyment of the privileges and advantages of legitimate children. And Louis XV., by his special grace, full power, and authority, legitimates the said demoiselle Guimard, and, in the impressive language of the ancient monarchy, declares that it is his royal will and pleasure that she shall bear the name of Marie Madeleine Guimard, that she shall be held, considered, and reputed, as he holds her, legitimate, that she shall never be reproached with her birth and that she shall enjoy, in the said quality, the same honours, prerogatives, rights, privileges, franchises, and advantages as are enjoyed by his other legitimate subjects.