Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier, French
“Wait! Everybody Shut Up! I Think I Hear the Ice Cream Truck!,” 1812
Oil on canvas
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Artist info is pointed to in my comment at a prior blog entry.
/// Madame Gioffrin’s salon— people trusted
all who mingled there were upper-crusted.
Seventeen fifty-five:
The “Enlightened” now thrive,
like Voltaire, (he’s not there; he was busted).
/// Every Wednesday for culture and fun
to rue Saint-Honoré they would run.
Madame dined with her “betters,”
France’s great Men of Letters,
in an “early-bird-special” at one.
/// They have gathered to hear Voltaire’s play,
called “The Orphan of China,” today.
Genghis Khan and his sons
is the subject. It runs
several hours; that’s the price they must pay.
/// “The Enlightenment.” Progress was heightened.
Hopes for freedom and tolerance brightened.
Who among them could guess,
in four decades, or less,
“Reign of Terror” and all Europe frightened.