The coquette uses her best arts to pacify the two angry gardeners; but it is all in vain; they express their indignation, and are determined to take their revenge upon their rival. Just in the instant that they are preparing to attack him, and that he is stoutly standing upon his defence, comes in a female gardener, amiable, lively, but without any mark of coquettry in her looks or dress; who, by the eager and frightened air with which she interposes, and places herself between the gallant gardener and the others, to prevent their hurting him, discovers the tender regard she has for him.
The two others, in respect to this charming girl, dare not proceed; but they give her to understand that the coquette has been so base as to return the flowers to the one, and the fruit to the other, that she might get the ribbons from the gardener whom she is protecting from their just resentment.
At this the offended fair one expresses to her lover her indignation, but does not the less for that make the others sensible that she will not suffer them to hurt him. She snatches next, from the coquette, the ribbons. The whole company round testify their approbation of what she has done, even the two gardeners, who were, the moment before, so angry, burst out a-laughing for joy, to see the coquette so well punished, being now left without flowers, fruit, or ribbons; at
which she withdraws, overwhelmed with confusion, and with the loud laugh and rallying gestures of her companions and the other gardeners.
The gay gardener, vexed at having been surprised by his mistress, in an act of gallantry to another woman, wants to pass it off to her as merely a scheme to amuse himself, and to laugh at the coquette. At first she will not hear him; she treads the ribbons under her feet, and is going away in a passion. He stops her, and entreats her forgiveness with an air so moving and penetrated, that, little by little, she is disarmed of her anger, and pardons him, in sign of which she gives him her hand.
There is no need of specifying here what the dance in action, accompanied
by the music, should express in this pas-de-deux; it is too obvious.
The gardeners, men and women, testify their rejoicing at this reconciliation, and the dance becomes general.
FINIS.
[*] Hanc partem Musicæ disciplinæ Majores mutam nominârunt, quæ ore clauso loquitur, et quibusdam gesticulationibus facit intelligi, quod vix narrante lingua, aut scripturæ textu possit agnosci.