in Europe--Voltaire, Frederick the Great, and himself. In his old age
he preserved all his skill, and M. Castel Blaze, who saw him at the
Academie fifty years after his _debut_ in 1748, declares that he still
danced with inimitable grace.

* Mme. Vestris, the last of the family, and the first wife
of the English comedian Charles Mathews, was the
granddaughter of Gaetan.

It is of Gaetan that the story is told in connection with Gluck, when
the opera of "Orphee" was put in rehearsal. The dancer wished for a
ballet in the opera.

"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!"

Gaetan retired from the stage at the successful _debut_ 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 _debutante_. 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 Gaetan Vestris for a father, an advantage which nature
refused me." "If," said Gaetan, 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 Gaetan 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
ground."

The son inherited the paternal arrogance. To the director of the opera,
De Vismes, who, enraged at some want of respect, said to him, "Do you
know who I am?" he drawled, "Yes! you are the farmer of my talent." On
one occasion Auguste refused to obey the royal mandate, and Gaetan said
to him with some reproof in his tones: "What! the Queen of France does
her duty by