"Write me the music of a chacone, Monsieur Gluck," said the god of
dancing.

"A chacone!" ejaculated the astonished composer; "do you think the
Greeks, whose manners we are endeavoring to depict, knew what a chacone
was?"

"Did they not?" said Vestris, amazed at the information; then, in a tone
of compassion, "How much they are to be pitied!"

Gaëtan retired from the stage at the successful _début_ of Auguste, but
appeared again from time to time to show his invulnerability to time. On
the occasion of his son's first appearance, the veteran, in full court
dress, sword, and ruffles, and hat in hand, stepped to the front by
the side of the _débutante_. After a short address to the public on the
importance of the choreographic art and his hopes of his son, he turned
to Auguste and said: "Now, my son, exhibit your talent. Your father is
looking at you." He was accustomed to say: "Auguste is a better dancer
than I am; he had Gaëtan Vestris for a father, an advantage which nature
refused me." "If," said Gaëtan, on another occasion, "le dieu de la
danse" (a title which he had given himself) "touches the ground from
time to time, he does so in order not to humiliate his comrades."

* This boast of Gaëtan Vestris seems to have inspired the
lines which Moore afterward addressed to a celebrated
_danseuse_:

".... You'd swear, When her delicate feet in the dance
twinkle round, That her steps are of light, that her home is
the air, And she only _par complaisance_ touches the