Mlle. Guimard’s life of gallantry and extravagance did not cause her to neglect her profession. No more assiduous student of her art ever pirouetted across a stage, and her career was a series of almost unbroken triumphs. In the ballet of _La Chercheuse d’esprit_, by Gardel the elder, played before the Court in 1777, and produced at the Opera the following year, her dancing and pantomime, in the part of Nicette, were generally allowed to have been inimitable. “The difficulty of pantomime,” writes Lefuel de Méricourt, in his journal _Le Nouveau Spectateur_, “is the power of expressing by means of gesture what seems to require the assistance of words. It was difficult, for example, in the person of the _Chercheuse d’esprit_ to supply it in the verse, ‘Allez chercher de l’esprit,’ which forms the _nœud_ of the piece. But the acting of the Guimard leaves nothing to be desired at this interesting moment.” The critic of the _Mercure de France_ is still more eulogistic: “One cannot praise too highly the talent of Mlle. Guimard, in the rôle of Nicette. It is necessary to see her to confess that never has one rendered a simpleton (_niaise_), at the same time simple and mischievous, more gracefully than this charming _actrice-danseuse_, who, in her art, is always what one would desire her to be.” And Grimm, in his _Correspondance littéraire_, after declaring that the talent of Mlle. Guimard has caused one to overlook the faults of the ballet, praises the _danseuse_ in these terms: “She has imparted to the rôle of Nicette, a gradation of shades, so fine, so correct, so delicate, so piquant, that the most ingenious poetry would be powerless to render the same characters with more wit, delicacy, or truth. All her steps, all her movements, are soft and harmonious, and exhibit a meaning both sure and picturesque. How naïve is her simplicity, and yet how devoid of silliness! How well does her natural grace conceal itself without affectation! How gradually does her character expand, and how much she pleases, without exerting herself to please! How she comes to life in the sweet rays of sentiment! It is a rosebud which one sees expand, to escape slowly from the fetters which envelop it, to tremble into bloom. We have never seen, in this kind of imitation, anything more delicious or more perfect.”