“De tous les cœurs et du sien la maîtresse, Elle alluma des feux qui lui sont inconnus. De Diane c’est la prêtresse Dansant sous les traits de Vénus.” Later there was to come a change and the idealistic young dancer was to be attacked for the very virtues her adoring poets--for Voltaire was not the only one--had celebrated. Her austerity got on the Parisian nerves! A more modern scribe has pictured her thus: SALLÉ “The perfect dance needs music sweet As dreams; seductive, so the feet Are led to move as by some spell; Or music as of murmuring shell. True dance shows naught of haste or heat, Nor trick, nor any kind of cheat. Beauty and Joy, twin souls, should meet To make that lovely miracle, The perfect dance. “A field of wind-kissed waving wheat; A swaying sea, scarce waked to greet The dawn; clouds drifting; these things tell What dance may be--if it excel. Men said they saw in hers complete, The perfect dance!” But if the Parisians did not quite appreciate her as they should have done at first, her return to Paris after her London successes was triumphant. Her portrait was painted by Lancret; her every appearance was greeted with enthusiasm. She remained at the Opera for some years, retired therefrom in 1740, but made frequent appearances after, at Versailles and at Fontainebleau, until a few years before her death in 1756. It is interesting to think that her personal dignity had won her the respect, and her beauteous art the homage of London before her qualities came to be recognised in Paris. It is possibly just the suggestion of austerity about her performance that appealed to the London audience. She had a poetic distinction above the average. She was an expressive _mime_, and her dancing was marked by supreme refinement, a magnetic reserve, a strange suggestion of pictured stillness, an exquisite simplicity and grace. CHAPTER XVIII LA BELLE CAMARGO Some say that Camargo had no right to be described “La Belle.” Contemporary accounts of her appearance differ. It was a time when people took sides, and duelled for their opinions. It is a curious fact that several famous dancers have been of questionable beauty--at least, as to face, and when in repose; for it is another curious thing that no dancer ever did or possibly ever could, look plain when dancing, that is, if dancing really well. The animation or gentle grace of the dance, whether quick or slow, seems inevitably to confer a beauty that otherwise might not be apparent. This fact in itself would appear to suggest that in dancing, as in other arts, and in life itself, it is the “spirit which quickeneth”; and, where that sufficiently illumines the body, what the body itself may otherwise be profits little.