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Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 341, March, 1844 by Various
page 61 of 303 (20%)

The reign of Madame de Maintenon (_la raison même_) over his affections,
declared itself by the sudden transfer of a ballet-opera, expressly
composed by Rameau and Quinault for the beauties of the court, to the
public theatre of the Palais Royal. No more noble figurantes at Versailles!
Louis le Pirouettiste's occupation was gone; and the _maître des ballets
du roi_ arrayed himself in sackcloth and ashes. But, lo! the glories of
his throne took wing with the loves and graces; ballets and victories
being effaced on the same page from the annals of his reign.

During the minority of Louis XV., the same royal dansomania was renewed.
The regent, Duke of Orleans, entertained the same notions of kingly
education, on this head, as his predecessor the cardinal; and Louis _le
Bien-aimé_, like his great-grandfather before him, was the best dancer of
his realm. Such dancing as it was! such exquisite footing! In the upper
story of the grand gallery at Versailles, hang several pictures
representing these court ballets; Cupids in coatees of pink lustring, with
silver lace and tinsel wings, wearing full-bottomed wigs and the riband of
the St Esprit; or Venuses in hoops and powder, whose _minauderies_ might
afford a lesson to the divinities of our own day for the benefit of the
omnibus box.

Some of these groups, by Mignard, Boucher, and their imitators, are
charming studies as _tableaux de genre_. But in nothing, by the way, are
they more remarkable than in their _decency_. The nudities of the present
times appear to have been undreamed of in the philosophy of Versailles.
That simple-hearted, though strong-minded American writer, Miss Sedgwick,
who has published an account of her consternation as she sat with Mrs
Jameson in the stalls of our Italian opera, might have witnessed the royal
performance unabashed. On being told, as she gazed upon the intrepid
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