One example of the sort of dramatic fare Madeleine was giving her guests on occasion at Pantin, or at the Chaussée d’Antin residence, will suffice. In 1721 at the Château of St. Cloud, in the presence of the Duc d’Orléans as Regent, there had been given a ballet called “Les Fêtes d’Adam.” Some of her friends suggested that Madeleine should go one better and produce a ballet on a classic subject with herself as Venus rising from the sea. But the Archbishop of Paris got news of the affair and managed to nip the suggestion in the bud. Perhaps it was never seriously intended; it may have been “merely a suggestion--nothing more.” One of her first lovers was Delaborde the financier, poor only as an amateur musician, who directed her theatre at Pantin till it was closed in 1770; and only of greater importance in her life, financially, was Soubise. But Madeleine had a particular _penchant_ for bishops it seems, and incidentally some of her later and most devoted friends were De Jarente, Bishop of Orleans, De Choiseul, the Archbishop of Cambrai, and Desnos, Bishop of Verdun. The first-named of these clerical worthies had the disposal of a whole sheaf of livings, that is to say, he was supposed to have, but it was really Madeleine who allotted them--abbeys, priories, chapels and so forth. She did not forget her friends, and De Jarente found himself unable to resist. “What Guimard wishes one must wish!” It was this allotment of the bishops’ _feuille des bénéfices_ which drew from Sophie Arnould the whimsical remark that “_Ce petit ver à soie_ (Guimard) _devrait être plus gras. Elle ronge une si bonne feuille._” Another favour which, through the Prince de Soubise, Madeleine was able to dispense among her friends was permission to hunt in the Royal forests, and it led to trouble on more than one occasion--her friends were so much of a _genre mixte_. But if men were weak where Guimard was concerned, there is no need to consider her as infamous. There is so often a tendency among chroniclers to consider that because a pretty woman, with every inducement to succumb to temptation, had a “protector,” all her men friends found her equally ready to receive their attentions. Nothing could be more unjust. There may have been reasons why Madeleine did not marry sooner than she did, and she may not have been quite that paragon of virtue our present time prefers, but in an age notorious for its callousness and cruelty as well as for its moral laxity she was distinguished as a woman not merely of fascination but of good heart and generous impulses. Did not one writer say of her that “_En quittant le théâtre, cette virtuose emporta le genre agréable avec elle_?” Did not Marmontel, referring to her well-known acts of charity, write of her the poem beginning: “Est-il bien vrai, jeune et belle damnée Que, du théâtre embelli par tes pas, Tu vas chercher dans le froid galetas, L’humanité plaintive abandonnée?”