Madeleine Guimard was not beautiful, she was not even pretty; her complexion was unpleasantly sallow; her thinness so extreme as to earn from her charitable colleagues of the Opera the sobriquets of “the spider,” “the skeleton of the Graces,” and so forth. But she more than atoned for these natural disadvantages by an indescribable charm of manner, which conquered the minds and hearts of all with whom she came in contact. “Love,” says one of her biographers, “is not blind for nothing, and Madeleine Guimard possessed more than any other woman of her time the art of placing a bandage over the eyes of those who regarded her.” Her triumphs in the sphere of gallantry rivalled those which she obtained upon the stage. Not one among her contemporaries succeeded in achieving a similar notoriety. Princes of the Blood and dancers of the Opera, great noblemen and men of letters, financiers, painters, and--_O tempora! O mores!_--bishops, nay, even an archbishop![74]--none could resist this nameless charm; all, in turn, were at her feet. In the early years of her career at the Opera, the reports of the inspectors of the Lieutenants of Police provide us with abundant information in regard to the amorous adventures of the _danseuse_. To M. Bertin, who, poor man! probably bored Mlle. Guimard as much as he had Sophie Arnould, succeeded M. de Boutourlin, the Russian Ambassador to the Court of Spain, who, during a visit to Paris, lived with her for some time, but, finally, had the bad taste to leave her for Mlle. Lafond of the Comédie-Italienne. Mlle. Guimard, however, speedily turned the tables upon the “Italians,” by detaching the Comte de Rochefort from Mlle. Collette of that theatre, a triumph which enriched her jewel-case by “a diamond collar of great price,” and other acquisitions. In the meanwhile--for the lady, like Mlle. Clairon, was quite capable of carrying on two or three love-affairs at once--a connection of a more durable nature had been formed between the _danseuse_ and the farmer-general Jean Benjamin de la Borde, first _valet-de-chambre_ to Louis XV. Jean Benjamin de la Borde, celebrated by those two verses of his friend Voltaire, “Avec tous les talens le destin l’a fait naître Il fait tous les plaisirs de la société,” was an ideal lover. He was at this time about thirty years of age, an accomplished courtier, a musician of some little talent, and possessed of considerable literary gifts,[75] and “a frank, loyal, modest, generous, and kind-hearted man.”