“Dlle. Guimard.--_Première danseuse de demi-caractère._ Her talent is known to every one; on the stage she still retains a very youthful appearance; if she has not a great deal of execution in her dancing, she possesses, by way of compensation, much grace; she is very good in _ballets d’action_ and in pantomime; she has much zeal and works hard; but she is an enormous expense to the Opera, where her wishes are followed with as much respect as if she was its director. Following her example, the other actresses demand the most costly dresses and equipments.” But enormous expense or not, the directors of the Opera seemed to have been possessed by an ever-present dread lest Mlle. Guimard should take it into her head to retire or transfer her services to some foreign stage. After the destruction of the Opera by fire in June 1781, and while the new Opera of the Porte Saint-Martin was in course of erection, the minds of many of the homeless singers and dancers “turned towards the shores of Great Britain and the guineas of Drury Lane,” and, in spite of the most stringent precautions on the part of the Government, several of them succeeded in emigrating.[89] Although Mlle. Guimard’s fortune placed her in a position, where, according to the expression of La Ferté, “she had very little need to trouble herself about England,” the anxious Intendant was only half-reassured and wrote to the Minister of the King’s Household, begging him to use every inducement possible to keep the lady in France. Mlle. Guimard remained faithful and reaped the reward of her fidelity in the spring of the following year, when she demanded and obtained a pension of 2500 livres, which, with an annual _gratification_ of 1500 livres and her salary of 2000 livres, brought her professional income up to 6000 livres. In the fire at the Opera-house, referred to above, Mlle. Guimard had a very narrow escape of her life. The fire broke out at the end of the third act of _Orphée_, happily after the majority of the audience had quitted their seats. Mlle. Guimard was in her _loge_ at the time, and, not daring to leave it, would probably have been stifled, had not a scene-shifter come to her assistance and, wrapping her in the curtains--for she was half-undressed--carried her through the smoke and flames to a place of safety. This was not the only time the _danseuse_ was in danger during the course of her professional career. In June 1784, while appearing at the Opera-house in the Haymarket, in London, then under Gallini’s management, the theatre was completely destroyed by fire. Boaden, in his Life of John Kemble, thus alludes to the catastrophe: