of the most delicious hours over an abundant and elegant dessert. There were the finest southern fruits, various sorts of confectionery, the rarest dessert wines, and pine-apple ice—in short, nothing was wanting to gratify the palate even of a professed epicure.
We took coffee under the walnut-tree in front of the house. Mimili’s numerous subjects assembled at her feet—turkeys, ducks, geese, hens, doves, of all sorts and colours. All eyes were fixed upon their queen; and in a hundred different languages, the variegated favourites gabbled, cackled, quacked, crowed, and cooed their delight on beholding their lovely mistress, who, with bountiful hand, distributed the golden grain among the innocent courtiers.
I had seen poultry fed a hundred—nay, a thousand times; but whoever had seen Mimili in this animated circle could not but have been enchanted with her humour, her sprightliness, her happy knack of extracting pleasure from the simplest office and occupation. She talked the Swiss Patois with the faithful companions of her calm domestic life, and unluckily I did not understand a tenth part of what she said. She made herself, however, perfectly intelligible to the animals: the chickens, attracted by the melody of her voice, came close to her, and pecked out of her hand; the loquacious ducks waddled
