It was as a dancer and always as a dancer that Guimard excelled. It was as a dancer she won her chief successes in the ballets “La Chercheuse d’Esprit” (1778), “Ninette à la Cour” (1778), “Mirza” (1779), “La Rosière” (1784) and “Le Premier Navigateur” (1785), all of which, by the way, were by Maximilien Gardel. Of her work in these one historian has written: “Her dance was always noble, full of life, light, expressive and voluptuous; her acting naïve, gay, piquante, tender and pathetic.” Connoisseurs reproached her at times for having grown a little “mannered,” but she always preserved in her dance that finish, even preciosity, and those delicate _nuances_ of style of which later times have proved the rarity. It was as a dancer she had the good fortune to please the King who, always a generous patron of the arts--with the nation’s money!--gave her for one dance she performed before him and the Queen, a pension of six thousand livres a year, giving at the same time a pension of one thousand a year to the man who danced with her, Despréaux, who later became her husband. This pension came to her the year following her appearance in “Le Premier Navigateur,” in 1786, apparently just at a time she was much in need of money. One may believe that Madeleine’s impulsive generosity had helped to bring about that need, as well as her known extravagance. For one thing, apart from her being ready to assist less fortunate artists, she had been the prime mover in an act of wholesale renunciation.