That was the time when Vestris, the God of Dance, as he called himself,
said publicly, and with the most perfect conviction, that there were
only three great men in Europe, the King of Prussia, M. de Voltaire, and
himself! "There are roses as well as thorns in my profession," said he
to a friend who expatiated on the happiness of being a public favourite.
"I assure you, sometimes I think I would rather be a mere captain of
cavalry than what I am." "Old chronicles," says Albert Cler, in a
spirited sketch of the French opera, "tell us of the extraordinary
luxury, in carriages, liveries, furniture, and jewels, displayed by the
goddesses of the opera. The Prince d'Henin passed a contract with Sophie
Arnould, by a clause of which he engaged to supply her with a new
equipage every month. A nymph who flourished in the time of the
Directory, the celebrated Clotilde, enjoyed, thanks to the munificence
of an Italian prince and of a Spanish admiral, an income of two
millions, and managed, notwithstanding this royal revenue, to get into
debt to the tune of some five hundred thousand francs yearly." Earlier
than this, by fifty years, the Camargo and the Sallé were all the rage.
The latter, Mr. Hervey tells us, paid a visit to London, and there, at
one of her performances, gold and bank-notes were showered upon the
stage, to the amount of £800. Her annual salary at the French opera was
less than £150. The suppers of Mademoiselle Guimard, another of the
fairy-footed sisterhood, whose bust, bequeathed by her to the opera, is
still the principal ornament of the dancers' green-room, were renowned
throughout Europe. They occurred thrice in the week; the first was
attended by the most distinguished courtiers and nobles, the second by
artists and by men of letters and learning, the third, which deserved
the name of an orgie, by the prettiest women she could collect.

Few of the amateurs, who, armed with double-barrelled telescopes,
contemplate from box or stall the agile bounds and graceful evolutions