admixture of burlesque exaggerations. "By dint of incurring simulated
dangers, the dancer accustoms herself to real peril, as a soldier in war
time becomes habituated to murder and pillage. She suspends herself from
wires, sits upon pasteboard clouds, disappears through trap doors, comes
in by the chimney and goes out by the window. In the first act of the
Peri there is so dangerous a leap, that I consider Carlotta Grisi risks
her life every time she takes it. Let M. Petipa be once awkward, or even
absent, and Carlotta will break her head upon the boards. I know an
Englishman who attends every performance of this ballet. He is persuaded
it will be fatal to Carlotta, and would not for the world miss the
catastrophe. It is the same man who, for three years, followed Carter
and Van Amburgh, always hoping that a day would come when the animals
would sup with their masters, and upon their masters." Considering the
preparatory ordeal and frequent perils of their profession, dancers
fairly earn the money and honours paid to them. Crowned heads have
condescended to treat them as equals. At Stuttgart, we are told,
Taglioni, towards the commencement of her career, won the affections of
the Queen of Wurtemberg, who shed tears at her departure. At Munich, the
King of Bavaria introduced her to his Queen, with the words,
"_Mademoiselle, je vous présente ma femme_." "At Vienna she was once
called before the curtain twenty-two times in one evening, and was drawn
to her hotel, in her own carriage, by forty young men of the first
Austrian families." Every one remembers the enthusiasm excited by Fanny
Elssler amongst the matter-of-fact Yankees. During her last engagement
at the French opera her salary was eighty thousand francs a-year.
Taglioni and Elssler personify the two styles into which the present
school of dancing is divided, the _ballonné_ and the _tacqueté_. The
former is lightness combined with grace, when the dancer seems to float
upon air. The _tacqueté_ is vivacity and rapidity; little quick steps on
the points of the feet.