Mlle. Prévost, already jealous of her former pupil, perhaps from a presentiment, had treacherously advised her to make her _début_ in a ballet called _Les Caractères de la danse_, in a step so difficult that none but the most celebrated dancers ever dared to attempt it. But, to her intense mortification, Mlle. de Camargo not only performed every movement correctly, but with a brilliancy, a verve, a vivacity which far surpassed all her predecessors. "Never," says a contemporary writer, "had the auditorium resounded with such applause as that which greeted the _débutante_. Such was the enthusiasm of the public that nothing else was talked about but the young Camargo." All the new fashions were named after her: coiffures _à la Camargo_, gowns _à la Camargo_, sleeves _à la Camargo_, shoes _à la Camargo_.[103] On the second night on which she appeared, there were twenty duels and quarrels without number at the doors of the Opera; all Paris was determined to get in, even at the sword-point. Mlle. de Camargo was not beautiful; indeed some of her contemporaries go so far as to assert that she was positively ugly: "a real monster, like her predecessor Mlle. Prévost," says one ungallant critic; while Noverre declares that "Nature had denied her every imaginable grace," and that she was "neither tall, nor pretty, nor well-formed." But whatever may have been her defects of face or figure, they did not interfere with her professional success. "The moment she began to dance people forgot her face. Besides, no one had time to see whether she was ugly or beautiful, so light and rapid were her movements. Her skips and twirls bewildered the audience. Then her countenance was changed, transfigured. 'Then her black eyes were full of smiles and provocations, while her laughing lips revealed her ivory teeth.' She did not seem to dance for the public, but for herself, for her own pleasure. Never had one imagined so many seductions, so many caprices, so much gaiety. 'It would be vain,' says Cahusac, 'to seek a playfulness more frank, a vivacity more natural.'"[104] Not the least important factor in the success of the young _danseuse_ seems to have been the fashion of her skirt, which she had curtailed to a point which the most daring of her predecessors had never even dreamed of. This innovation was extremely popular with the younger patrons of the Opera, but, on the other hand, alarmed the modesty of many of the more conservative playgoers.