Every year Mlle. Guimard continued to grow in favour, with both the habitués of the Opera and at the Court. As Eglé in _Les Fêtes d’Hébé, ou Les Talents lyriques_, by Mondorge and Rameau, as Flore in _Naïs_, as an Amazon in _Tancrède_, and as the statue in _Pygmalion_, she was received with ever-increasing applause, and after her appearance in the last-named part, she was generally admitted to be one of the most brilliant _danseuses_ who had ever appeared on the Paris stage. The dance of Mlle. Guimard has been described by Noverre as the poetry of motion. It was a very simple one, consisting merely of a variety of little steps, but every movement was characterised by such exquisite grace that the public soon came to prefer her to any other performer. What, however, chiefly distinguished her from her colleagues was the fact that to her talents as a _danseuse_, she united all the qualities of an excellent actress; her countenance, her attitude, her gestures all spoke, and her dance seemed to be only the faithful and very animated expression of the sentiments which she experienced.[72] But let us cite on this subject, a passage from a very interesting letter written, some three years after her death, by her husband, Jean Étienne Despréaux, to a friend, who had asked him for some information about his wife and the Opera: “There are three kinds of grace: grace of form, grace of attitude, and grace of movement. Grace of form is the gift of Nature; it is rare. That of attitude is a choice of positions of the body, which good taste chooses and indicates. That of movement consists not merely in passing from one attitude to another, in following the cadence of the music, but it requires the expression to be in conformity with the _genre_ that it represents, especially in the _danse terre-à-terre_, which is very different from the _danse sautée_. It is in the _danse terre-à-terre_ that Mlle. Guimard charmed, for more than twenty-five years, a critical public, in the gavottes of _Armide_ and in two hundred other dances. She was always new; I do not speak only of her feet, they count for little in comparison with the charm of body and head. It is that which is the perfection of the picture. She played perfectly both comedy and _opéra-comique_. Her expressive face depicted easily all the feelings that she experienced, or was believed to experience. That was why she displayed the most perfect pantomime in _Médée et Jason_, in the ballet of _Ninette_, in _Myrza_, and in many other ballets. She was always perfect, because grace never forsook her. “She knew how to distinguish the trivial from what was really comic, and joined to the charm of grace and of harmony of movement facial expression. “...She did not approve of the present fashion of raising the foot as high as the hip. These exaggerated movements dislocate the body, and are the enemies of grace. Attitudes of this kind have no other effect than to astonish the _parterre_.”[73]