“Ah! Camargo, que vous êtes brillante! Mais que Sallé, grand dieux! est ravissante! Que vos pas sont légers, et que les siens sont doux! Elle est inimitable, et vous êtes nouvelle; Les nymphes sautent comme vous Et les Grâces dansent comme elle.” It is all safe praise of course, but when we separate the qualities one finds that he is only versifying the current opinion--Camargo is “brillante,” her steps are “légers,” and the “nouvelle” refers less to _her_ than to the novelty of her steps, with the clever invention of which she delighted her audience; and the nymphs, you observe, “_sautent_ comme vous,” an appropriate phrase for one whose _entrechats_ amazed a generation to which such things were new. On the other hand, Sallé was “ravissante,” her steps were “doux”; she was “inimitable,” and “les Grâces _dansent_ comme elle,” a point of special significance when we recall the historic distinction between the words _sauter_ and _danser_. Voltaire’s admiration was not exactly fevered--could the icy “intellectual” ever have been that? Not so the rest of Paris. Rumour soon gave her countless lovers--as it will a pretty actress to-day?--but history does not record that she succumbed to their protestations. Certainly duels were fought on her behalf; but probably she was unaware that she was the cause; and certainly she did not provoke them. _Was_ she a pretty actress? Setting aside the opinion of her feminine contemporaries, unbiased colleagues thought not. Yet painters such as Lancret, Vanloo, and Pater sought for the honour of depicting her graceful figure and--was it her face? Well, as to actual features perhaps she was not faultlessly beautiful, but with that mingled Italian and Spanish blood, even if she were swarthy as some said, she must have been striking, temperamental, full of fire and “interesting” as we might say to-day. Much of her fascination must have been in expression, and one feels that she had that quality which often makes a dancer--sheer joy in dancing. [Illustration: M. Ballon and Mlle. Prévôt (_After an engraving [reversed] in the Bibliothèque de l’Opéra_).] [Illustration: Camargo (_From the painting by Lancret in the Wallace Collection_).] Her style was noted by contemporaries as combining quickness with grace to a degree not previously achieved, and she won special credit for her invention of new steps. Her improvisation of new dances was remarkable, and it is important to note that she was the first to perform an _entrechat_, which, only for the benefit of non-dancing readers, may be described as the step in which a dancer actually crosses her feet rapidly while in mid-air. This historic innovation took place in 1730, and she could make four crossings; while eight are said to be as many as any dancer has since performed.