"Thou, Flora! spread thy mantle round
All this enchanted ground!
Pour blessings on these happy, happy hours!
Laurels, and you, ye myrtles, amorous flowers!
With loving hand I pluck you now,
Stripping your leaves adown,
To be a glorious crown,
Of a new god to decorate the brow!"
In the next year, another fete owed its _eclat_ to the talents of the
Dame Lebrun; but the object of it was no longer the Pindaric poet, but
the sub-collector of taxes. But as it was impossible to keep the Sieur
Lebrun entirely away from any of the haunts of the Muses, he was
enlisted in the corps of subject personages, and performed the Co-too to
the Sieur Grimod in the character of a satyr! And this was the more in
keeping, as the scene was a wood, and the hero of the entertainment
enacted the part of a sort of Orson, under the name of Sylvanus. In
1772, the gaieties of the Dame Lebrun suffered no abatement, except from
an attack of illness; and, for the recovery of her health, she spent the
greater portion of the year at the country-house of the Sieur
Grimod--sometimes with her husband, says the _Memoire_, and sometimes
without. The following spring was passed, as usual, in balls and
masquerades. The house of the Sieur Grimod was again the scene of a
splendid entertainment; but, on this occasion, the object of the fete
was neither the Sieur Bacchus, nor the Sieur Sylvain, but Madame Lebrun
herself. The indefatigable Bacchus, however, if not the principal
personage of the day, was the chief performer. There was a procession in
boats. The Sieur Lebrun did the honours of the enchanted island to his
wife. Dressed as a sailor, he conducted her, disguised as Flora, in an
ornamented barge, all festooned with garlands, and illuminated with
coloured lamps. It was a truly fairy scene, and the Dame Lebrun did not
at that time look on the composer of the spectacle as a malignant
cobold, the enemy of her repose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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