Under these circumstances, the _danseuse_ and her friends decided that the only thing to be done was to abandon the proposed entertainment, and send the supper to the curé of Saint-Roch, for distribution among the sick poor of his parish. And, as each of the subscribers to the prohibited picnic had contributed the sum of five louis, the wits named it, “_le repas des Chevaliers de Saint-Louis_.”
Nevertheless, in spite of the archbishop and the _dévots_, the theatre of the Chaussée-d’Antin continued to flourish and to number amongst its patrons Princes of the Blood, _grands seigneurs_ of the Court, and courtesans of the highest distinction. The parody of _Ernelinde_, composed by the dancer Despréaux, performed there in September 1777, enjoyed an immense success, and was commanded to be represented before the Court at Choisy, the following month, when the young King, who had hitherto shown but little taste for the theatre, laughed so immoderately throughout the three acts, that he bestowed a pension on the dancer.
Mlle. Guimard’s life of gallantry and extravagance did not cause her to neglect her profession. No more assiduous student of her art ever pirouetted across a stage, and her career was a series of almost unbroken triumphs. In the ballet of _La Chercheuse d’esprit_, by Gardel the elder, played before the Court in 1777, and produced at the Opera the following year, her dancing and pantomime, in the part of Nicette, were generally allowed to have been inimitable.
“The difficulty of pantomime,” writes Lefuel de Méricourt, in his journal _Le Nouveau Spectateur_, “is the power of expressing by means of gesture what seems to require the assistance of words. It was difficult, for example, in the person of the _Chercheuse d’esprit_ to supply it in the verse,
which forms the _nœud_ of the piece. But the acting of the Guimard leaves nothing to be desired at this interesting moment.”
The critic of the _Mercure de France_ is still more eulogistic: “One cannot praise too highly the talent of Mlle. Guimard, in the rôle of Nicette. It is necessary to see her to confess that never has one rendered a simpleton (_niaise_), at the same time simple and mischievous, more gracefully than this charming _actrice-danseuse_, who, in her art, is always what one would desire her to be.”