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Before I began the work I took time to consider of my plan. In a heroic ballet I proposed three different subjects, in three acts, detached from each other, set to music of a different character, taking for each subject the amours of a poet. I entitled this opera Les Muses Galantes.

The thesaurus and omnium gatherum of the genus was Sauval's "Intrigues galantes de la cour de France" , of which Dunlop remarks that "to a passion, which has, no doubt, especially in France, had considerable effect in state affairs, there is assigned ... a paramount influence."

I was afterwards dissatisfied with her silence on the subject of Diderot, and with her proceedings relative to myself, as well on the subject of the 'Muses Galantes', as on that of the 'Devin du Village', which had not in any manner produced me advantages proportioned to its success; and on all occasions I had found her but little disposed to serve me.

People were assembling for supper, and passing to and fro under low-hanging branches; and the gaily-colored gowns of the women glimmered through a faint blue haze like that with which Boucher and Watteau and Fragonard loved to veil, and thereby to make wistful, somehow, the antics of those fine parroquet-like manikins who figure in their fêtes galantes.

I also had some symphonies performed from my 'Muses Galantes'. Whether these pleased the performers, or the ballet-master of St. John Chrysostom wished to flatter me, he desired to have two of them; and I had afterwards the pleasure of hearing these executed by that admirable orchestra.

devoted to seventeenth-century art. Nicholases at three francs a week and his board, but who soon invented a new manner and became famous as the Peintre des Scènes Galantes.

The want of directness, the absence of candor, the non-recognition of truth in its broad and deep sense, is, indeed, a characteristic phase of life, of expression, and of manners in France. A lover of his nation confesses that even in "galantes aventures l'esprit prenait la place du coeur, la fantaisie celle du sentiment."

Before I began the work I took time to consider of my plan. In a heroic ballet I proposed three different subjects, in three acts, detached from each other, set to music of a different character, taking for each subject the amours of a poet. I entitled this opera Les Muses Galantes.

Monticelli painted landscapes, romantic scenes, "fêtes galantes" in the spirit of Watteau, and still-life pictures: one could not imagine a more inspired sense of colour than shown by these works which seem to be painted with crushed jewels, with powerful harmony, and beyond all with an unheard-of delicacy in the perception of fine shades.

July, August, and September, hot as in Languedoc: winter insupportable; one must keep always indoors. The ladies spirituelles, galantes, dévotes. Gambling at Quebec, dancing and conversation at Montreal. My friends the Indians, who are often unbearable, and whom I treat with perfect tranquillity and patience, are fond of me.