requesting you to dance before the King of Sweden, and
you do not do yours! You shall no longer bear my name. I will have no
misunderstanding between the house of Vestris and the house of Bourbon;
they have hitherto always lived on good terms." It nearly broke
Auguste's heart when one day during the French Revolution he was seized
by a howling band of _sans culottes_ and made to exhibit his finest
skill on the top of a barrel before this ragged mob of liberty-loving
citizens!

The fascinating sylph, Madeleine Guimard, broke almost as many hearts
and inspired as many duels as the charming Sophie Arnould herself.
Plain even to ugliness, and excessively thin, her exquisite dancing and
splendid eyes made great havoc among her numerous admirers. Lord Byron
said that thin women when young reminded him of dried butterflies,
when old of spiders. The stage associates of Mile. Guimard called her
"L'araignee," and Sophie Arnould christened her "the little silkworm,"
for the sake of the joke about "la feuille." But such spiteful raillery
did not prevent her charming men to her feet whom greater beauties had
failed to captivate. Houdon the sculptor molded her foot, and the great
painters vied for the privilege of decorating the walls of her hotel.
When she broke her arm, mass was said in church for her recovery,
and she was one of the reigning toasts of Paris. Among the numerous
_liaisons_ of Mile. Guimard, that with the Prince de Soubise is most
noted. After this she eloped with a German prince, and the Prince de
Soubise pursued them, wounded his rival, killed three of his servants,
and brought her back to Paris in triumph. After a great variety of
adventures of this nature, she married in 1787 a humble professor of
dancing named Despriaux. Lord Mount Edgcumbe saw her in 1789 at the
King's Theatre in London. "Among them," he writes, referring to a troupe
of new performers, "came the famous Mile. Guimard, then nearly sixty
years old, but still full of grace and gentility, and she had never
possessed more."

IV.

When Sophie Arnould retired from the stage, she took a house near the
Palais Royal, and extended as brilliant a hospitality as ever. She was
as celebrated for her practical jokes as for her witticisms, of which
the following freak is a good example: One evening in 1780 she gave a
grand supper, to which, among others, she invited M. Barthe, author of
"Les Fausses Infidelites," and many similar pieces. He was inflated
w