wrote Voltaire. Nevertheless, she had now to be content with a divided empire. During her long absence, a new star had arisen, in the person of a Mlle. Sallé, with whom the Camargo had henceforth to share the applause of the public and the praises of the poets. Mlle. Sallé's style of dancing differed widely from that of her celebrated rival. Whereas the latter danced with astonishing rapidity and rose so high from the stage that "it seemed as if she were going to touch the friezes," Mlle. Sallé danced slowly and with the minimum of exertion, relying for effect upon grace of movement and voluptuous poses.
The rivalry between the two stars was very bitter, and all attempts to promote a better understanding proved fruitless, although Voltaire himself intervened, and addressed to the ladies some graceful lines, in which he adroitly divided his praises between them:—
| "Ah! Camargo, que vous êtes brillante! |
| Mais que Sallé, grands dieux! est ravissante! |
| Que vos pas sont légers, et que les siens sont doux! |
| Elle est inimitable et vous êtes nouvelle. |
| Les Nymphes sautent comme vous, |
| Et les Grâces dansent comme elle." |
In spite of the rivalry of Mlle. Sallé, the fame of the elder ballerina was still sufficient to have satisfied a less exacting artiste. An air to which she danced in the first act of Pyramé et Thisbé excited such enthusiasm that it became the vogue of the salons, first, as a song, and, later, as a dance, which was called after the danseuse, the "Camargo," and by that name was still known a century later.
Her triumphs in the dance encouraged Mlle. de Camargo to tempt fortune in another emploi, and, in an opera called Les Talents lyriques, she accordingly made her début as a singer. She had a very pretty voice, and was much applauded; but, for some reason, did not repeat the experiment.
At the age of forty-one, conscious that she no longer possessed the "souplesse forte et légère," which Voltaire had once celebrated, Mlle. de Camargo decided to retire, and, at Easter 1751, quitted the scene of her many triumphs, never to return. Her popularity had endured to the last, for Casanova, who saw her dance some months earlier, declares that the public applauded her "with a kind of frenzy."
On her retirement, she received a pension of 1500 livres, instead of the usual 1000, and another pension of a like amount from the King. She had, however, little need of such assistance, as, more prudent than most of her colleagues, she had found secure investments for a considerable portion of the sums which her various admirers had lavished upon her; while, if Meusnier is correct, she was in receipt of an annual allowance of 12,000 livres from the Comte de Clermont, which would have been materially increased, but for the interference of Mlle. Le Duc.
Henceforth she ceased to interest the town. In 1753, we learn that she has taken unto herself another impecunious lover, a certain Chevalier de la Guerché, "who lived with her, and the whole of whose expenses she defrayed," after which we hear no more of her until the chroniclers record her death, which took place on April 28, 1770, at the age of sixty. She was then living in the Rue Saint-Honoré, "like a respectable bourgeoise, very assiduous in visiting the poor of her parish, and always surrounded by a dozen dogs, to whom she was much attached." She was nursed in her last illness by the widow of François Boucher, the famous painter.
The best-known portrait of Mlle. de Camargo is that by Lancret, in the Wallace Collection, at Hertford House. An original repetition of this portrait, with a marked variation in the colour scheme, is in the Museum at Nantes. The Neues Palais at Potsdam contains another portrait by Lancret, entitled La Camargo avec son danseur, which shows the ballerina in the act of executing a pas de deux with a male dancer.[117]