The second letter, in order of date, is more interesting. “Since my arrival in this town,” she writes, “the people have not left me a single moment to myself. I am overwhelmed by the kindness of all the great ladies and principally of the Duchess of Devonshire. I pass all my time with her, when I am not engaged at the theatre. In truth, my dear little good friend, the manner in which I am everywhere received is so flattering that a less sensible head than that of your little good friend might be turned by it.” She goes on to say that she has just been given a benefit performance, which has realised 950 guineas, and has concluded an engagement for the last five weeks of her stay in England. For this she is to receive 650 guineas, “which makes a very pretty sum for me to bring back to Paris.” “This journey has not been so unprofitable, _hein!_ What think you about it? They love me to distraction, these good English! _Voilà ce que c’est que le mérite!_” The third letter shows us that in London the ballerina was regarded as the very glass of fashion: “For the ball [a ball at Drury Lane organised by the Duchess of Devonshire and other ladies] one must have dresses, and the English ladies are as coquettish as the French. The moment I alighted from my carriage on my arrival, I was besieged by _marchandes des modes_ and tailors, who had come to beg me, on the part of the ladies, to give my opinion on their costumes. You know well that I did not make the fashions.” Of Mlle. Guimard’s visits to England there exists a weird souvenir in the form of a coloured etching entitled: “The Celebrated Mademoiselle G----rd, or Grimhard, from Paris. _Published by Thomas Humphrey, May 26, 1787._” The leanness of the ballerina, of which we have spoken elsewhere, seems to have increased with years, and was the theme of jests innumerable at her expense and that of her lovers, most of them, however, good-natured enough, for Madeleine Guimard had few enemies, and even the chroniclers of contemporary scandal generally have a good word to say for her. In the etching in question one sees, under a toque with sky-blue plumes, a woman, with a death’s head crowned with false hair, and a bony neck, raising in the air a consumptive leg and waving her arms, at the ends of which are phalanxes of little bones in place of fingers.[91] On her return to Paris, from England, in the summer of 1789, Mlle. Guimard married Jean Étienne Despréaux, the dancing-master and poet, who had been for some years an intimate friend, though not, it would appear, a lover.[92] The marriage took place on August 14, at the church of Sainte-Marie du Temple, the age of the bride being forty-six and that of her husband thirty-one. The _acte de mariage_, cited by Jal, states that the two had received the nuptial benediction, “after having renounced their profession,” and, to the great sorrow of her countless admirers, the Opera knew Madeleine Guimard no more.