ns, as operatic Turks, Laplanders and Poles, similar to the
figures then gracing the frontispieces of books, sometimes in the dress
of peasants, pedagogues, peddlers, milkmaids and flower-girls like the
fanciful villagers with which the current taste then fills the stage.
They sing, they dance, and come forward in turn to recite petty
verses composed for the occasion consisting of so many well-turned
compliments.[2268]--At Chantilly "the young and charming Duchesse de
Bourbon, attired as a voluptuous Naiad, guides the Comte du Nord, in
a gilded gondola, across the grand canal to the island of Love;" the
Prince de Conti, in his part, serves as pilot to the Grand Duchesse;
other seigniors and ladies "each in allegorical guise," form the
escort,[2269] and on these limpid waters, in this new garden of
Alcinous, the smiling and gallant retinue seems a fairy scene in
Tasso.--At Vaudreuil, the ladies, advised that they are to be carried
off to seraglios, attire themselves as vestals, while the high-priest
welcomes them with pretty couplets into his temple in the park;
meanwhile over three hundred Turks arrive who force the enclosure to
the sound of music, and bear away the ladies in palanquins along the
illuminated gardens. At the little Trianon, the park is arranged as a
fair, and the ladies of the court are the saleswomen, "the queen keeping
a cafe," while, here and there, are processions and theatricals; this
festival costs, it is said, 100,000 livres, and a repetition of it is
designed at Choisy attended with a larger outlay.

Alongside of these masquerades which stop at costume and require only
an hour, there is a more important diversion, the private theatrical
performance, which completely transforms the man, and which for six
weeks, and even for three months, absorbs him entirely at rehearsals.
Towards 1770,[2270] "the rage for it is incredible; there is not an
attorney in his cottage who does not wish to have a stage and his
company of actors." A Bernardine living in Bresse, in the middle of a
wood, writes to Colle that he and his brethren are about to perform "La
Partie de Chasse de Henri IV," and that they are having a small theater
constructed "without the knowledge of bigots and small minds." Reformers
and moralists introduce theatrical art into the education of children;
Mme. de Genlis composes comedies for them, considering these excellent
for the securing of a good pronunciation, proper self-confidence and the