Helm, W. H.; Vigée-Lebrun, Louise-Elisabeth [Ill.]: Vigée-LeBrun 1755-1842: her life, works and friendships : with a catalogue raisonne of the artist's pictures : with a frontispiece in colours, 40 photogravure plates and other illustrations (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1915)

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VIGEE-LEBRUN

At the Opera, Madame Saint-Huberti so fascinated Madame Lebrun
that for this one member of the audience the rest of the performers were
merely people who interfered with her pleasure. In the ballets at that
time the men were often more regarded than the women. Gardel and the
elder Vestris were, in Vigee-Lebrun’s girlhood, the principal male dancers,
and the most notable 'premiere danseuse was the rather notorious Madeleine
Guimard. On seeing a dance wherein the two men had to pursue the
danseuse, who was small and thin, some wag said it looked like two big
dogs quarrelling over a bone !
Gardel is partly remembered as the man who finally banished from
the stage the masks formerly worn by dancers ; it was the elder Vestris
who said, “There are only three great men in Europe—the King of Prussia,
Voltaire, and I.”
Of his son, who succeeded him at the Opera in 1781, and whom
Madame Lebrun calls “ the most wonderful dancer that could ever be
seen,” so light and graceful was his pirouetting, old Vestris declared that
if he touched the ground at all, “ it was only out of consideration for
his comrades ! ”