Madeleine Guimard, whose fame loomed up soon after the retirement of Camargo, remained for forty years a commanding figure in the French ballet. Born in Paris in 1743, she made her début at the age of eighteen and was acclaimed as an artist of exquisite figure, marvellous grace, and extremely distinguished manners. She knew how to make money out of her rich patrons but she was also most reckless in the expenditure of her wealth and her affections. She possessed two elaborate villas, one at Pantin, the other in the Chaussée d’Antin, in both of which she had built little stages on which she and her contemporary stage celebrities gave performances to the high society of Paris. Fleury says that ‘it was a gala day for one of our actors when he could escape from the desert of the _Comédie Française_ and disport himself on the boards of a theatre so perfectly arranged.’ She entertained the guests of the court at her houses and loved to make her arrangements to clash with those given at the court. She was said to be pensioned by a Royal prince, a banker and a bishop, but lost nearly everything in the revolutionary storms. Retiring from the Opéra in 1789, she married the dancer Despreaux, who died soon after. Her old age was verging on misery and she died neglected in a miserable three-room apartment in the Rue Menars, at the age of seventy-three. A great dramatic _ballerina_ after Camargo was Mlle. Allard, whose partners were Vestris, Dauberval and Gardel. Her frenzied admirers claimed that she far surpassed Camargo because of her added fire, her unusual agility and the expressive beauty of her poses. At one time she would be an ideal Sylvia, gentle and graceful to her finger-tips, then again she was the terrible Medea; now she personified the ethereal charms of a goddess of youth, then the voluptuous passions of a sultana. She figured as the _prima ballerina_ in many of the ballets written by Maximilian Gardel, Milon, Mozart and Rossini. Of other dancers of the French school who enjoyed public favor under the Republic and the early Napoleonic era Duport is the only conspicuous figure. Being a special favorite with Napoleon, he was the star in the ballets of Blasis and Blache. He composed some ballets himself in which he played the leading rôles. But these gained little success. Napoleon wrote to Cambaceres from Lyons that it was inconceivable to him why Duport had been allowed to compose ballets. ‘This young man has not been in vogue a year. When one has made such a marked success in a particular line, it is a little precipitate to invade the specialty of other men, who have grown gray at their work.’ This clearly shows how much the great emperor was interested in the ballet, and how well he could criticize its artistic values.