; and yet undergoes more fatigue than a
washerwoman. We have now traced her for nearly ten years. She must by
this time be two or three-and-thirty; and yet, we will venture to say,
no girl of eighteen ever panted so earnestly for her first ball, as the
Dame Lebrun did for six or seven of those entertainments every week. We
can imagine no greater misery to her, than one of the quiet suppers she
talks of; and if, in the agony of her disgust, she occasionally gave the
Sieur Lebrun a slap in the face, we have not the slightest doubt he
deserved it, and that she enjoyed the rest of the evening with the
soothing conviction in her own mind that she was a much-injured woman,
and had vindicated the honour of her sex. We have seen, from one of her
letters, that it took her two hours to dress--that she thought nearly as
much of eating and drinking as even of Monsieur Grimod; and we shall
shortly perceive, that clothes, and love, and gluttony, don't interfere
with the powers of poetical compliment, and that her husband--perhaps on
the principle of poetry succeeding best in fiction--is still the object
of them.

The St Denis's Day of 1770, says the _Memoire_, was celebrated, like the
former ones, by a fete, designed and composed by the Dame Lebrun. The
room represented a lawn, with a grove, fountains, &c. Naiads, hidden in
the reeds, chanted these lines in honour of her husband:--

"Ye naiads smiling round,
Sing Nature's poet in your lays!
Let echoes, till they're tired, resound
With his harmonious praise!
Oh, let your fountains flow
On the greensward below;
And with their notes prolong
The birds' full-throated song!

"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