CHAPTER XIII

The Countess Czerwinska—The Countess Broel Plater—Mlle. de Laval—The Duchesse de Grammont—An Absent-Minded Gentleman—Dusauty, the Fencing Master—The Marquis of Anglesey—Charming Venezuelans—Miss Fanny Parnell

After finishing my studies at Bonn, I returned to Paris and rejoined my parents. I was very happy in Paris, of which I have always been very fond; but what I missed there chiefly at that time was the companionship of young fellows of my own age. This reminds me of what Jim Doyne once said to me when he came to visit me there:—

“I should like Paris better than London, if I could only fill the place with my English friends, and send some of these Frenchmen to London instead.”

I often experienced this very same feeling in Paris. It was very rarely that I met a Frenchman of my own age that I cared for, as I did for some English and Americans. Once at the Opéra Comique I happened to sit in the stalls next a young Frenchman, who was very pleasant, and whom I got to know well afterwards. This was the Vicomte Frédéric de Kilmaine, who, though of Irish extraction, could not speak a single word of English. A few days after I had made the Vicomte’s acquaintance I went for a drive with him in his pretty victoria to the Bois de Boulogne, where we had some refreshments at one of the cafés there before returning to Paris. He often afterwards came to take me for a drive, and we became very good friends. The Vicomte de Kilmaine, however, was an exception so far as young Frenchmen were concerned, for I never became very intimate with any of them. M. de Lesquier d’Attainville, grandson of the Prince de Rivoli, Duc de Masséna, was a very nice fellow, and I liked him exceedingly; but he was older than myself, and I did not see him very often except at the different houses which I visited of an afternoon or evening. I also liked Prince Jean Radziwill, who was a Pole, but I saw even less of him than I did of M. de Lesquier d’Attainville, and, besides, he was much older than I was, and a few years make a world of difference when one is very young.

In after years, at Franzensbad, in Bohemia, I made the acquaintance of the Countess Broel Plater and her son and daughter-in-law. The Countess, by her first marriage, was the Princess Lubomirska, and Prince Jean Radziwill was her son-in-law. The Countess was delighted to hear that I had known Prince Jean so well in former years, and told me many things about him. I often used to meet the Prince at Baroness Adelsdorfer’s hôtel in Paris, and also at the Countess Czerwinska’s, _née_ Countess Czajkowska, and I remember him telling me that he was best man at the last-named lady’s marriage. It was a marriage of affection, and a son was born a year or so later; but subsequently the pair had a quarrel and refused to live together any more. The husband was afterwards quite willing to make it up, but the Countess absolutely declined to do so, though Prince Radziwill said he did everything he could to persuade her to be reconciled. The Countess had the right to keep her little son Stanislaus, who was a boy seven years old. At the time I knew her in Paris, according to Russian law, in the event of a separation or a divorce, the mother has always the custody of the sons, and the father that of the daughters. This ought to be the rule in England, but, as we are an eccentric nation, our laws quite naturally differ from those of all others.

The Countess Czerwinska was a very good-looking, fair young woman, of about four-and-twenty. She was extremely well read and very intellectual, and appeared perfectly to idolize her son. She was very fond of the poet Mickiewicz, whose poems she often recited to me in Polish, afterwards giving me her own translation of them in French. It was said that she was employed by the Russian Government to find out political secrets, and the salon at her hôtel in the Rue Chaillot was always filled with men from the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, like M. de Lesquier d’Attainville, and also with representatives of the various embassies.[25] She asked me once to procure her an invitation to a private masked ball given by the millionaire Ménier, who had made his fortune with the famous chocolate of that name, which I did, and escorted her also to the Concours Hippique at the Palais de l’Industrie.

The Countess Broel Plater was an old lady, who in her younger days had been, she told me, lady-in-waiting to the Empress of Russia, consort of Nicholas I. She also informed me that she had been brought up in the Palace at St. Petersburg, and that she was really a daughter of the Tsar, as everyone at the Court knew. One day, when we were taking coffee and listening to the band in the Kur Park at Franzensbad, she piqued my curiosity not a little by telling me that there were so many secrets at the Russian Court, that to reveal them would make one’s blood run cold, and that, to her knowledge, three cold-blooded murders had been perpetrated at the Palace at Petersburg during the time she was living there. She mentioned all the details of these crimes, which had been committed at the instigation of those in power at that time, and even the names of the victims, observing that at the time of their occurrence she was pledged to secrecy, failing which, she would have been poisoned herself. “No one,” she concluded, “can possibly realize, unless they have lived, as I have, at the Russian Court, what fearful things have happened there, simply in order to satisfy the caprice of a sovereign. Whether it was the destruction of a girl, man or woman, it mattered not, so long as the removal of the person served to conceal something which the Tsar desired should not be made public.”

While relating these events, the Countess became quite excited, and her recital of them was so dramatic that one could almost imagine that she had actually taken part in them. She gave me, in fact, quite a creepy feeling, so that I was really relieved when she came to an end of her accounts of these tragic episodes. She afterwards told me that she was going to Nice with her son, whom I frequently met at Franzensbad with his lovely young wife, and I used to sit in the Kur and talk to them. The Countess Broel Plater had a charming villa, in which she had an aviary containing all kinds of rare birds, and it was her delight to sit near this aviary, admiring the gorgeous plumage of her beautiful birds and listening to them sing, while she thought how fortunate she was to have finished with the Russian Court and its dark tragedies. She told me that she knew the family of Count Branicki at Nice, and also the Countess Zamoyska, a very lovely woman, who had only very recently married, and was at that time the greatest heiress in Poland. Liszt says of Polish women: “_Ce qu’elles veulent, c’est l’attachement; ce qu’elles espèrent, c’est le dévouement; ce qu’elles exigent, c’est l’honneur, le regret et l’amour de la patrie, ce qui faisait dire à l’Empereur Nicholas I.: ‘Je pourrais en finir des Polonais, si je venais à bout des Polonaises.’_”

The Countess invited me to stay with her at Nice in the winter, if I were able to go there, but, for some reason, I was prevented from doing so. She took a great fancy to my little girl, Xenia, who was with me at the time and was then seven years old, saying that she reminded her of a near relative of her own, who also bore the Russian name of Xenia, which increased not a little the Countess’s interest in my daughter.

In Paris I always attended the “_jours_” of the Countess Dzialyńska, sister of Prince Czartoryski. Her daughter, Countess Hélène Dzialyńska, spoke English fluently, and told me she could learn any language in a fortnight. She wrote a book in French against capital punishment, called _Sur la peine de mort_, which had a large circulation. The Princess Czartoryska was a royal princess, a Bourbon, and lived at the Maison Lambert. Among their friends was a Swedish officer attached to the Embassy, who was a frequent guest at their soirées. He was no longer young, but always wore a corset and lavender kid gloves, and never took his gloves off even to eat his supper. In his younger days he had been dubbed, “_la fille du régiment_,” and this nickname still clung to him. I met him there frequently, and he still considered himself quite irresistible _auprès des dames_.

I used to go about a good deal in Paris at this time with Cecil Slade, a boy of fourteen, the son of a friend of my father, General Sir William Slade. He usually called for me of an afternoon, and we took long walks on the Boulevards. A girl friend whom I made was Mlle. Julie Piétri, who was about fourteen. I often called at her father’s house in the Champs-Elysées, and one day I said to Madame Piétri, before her daughter, that I wondered why French girls were not allowed the same liberty with boys which English girls enjoyed. Madame Piétri answered that it might be all right with English girls, but if French ones were allowed to be alone with gentlemen, the consequences might be disastrous, as French girls could not control their feelings. I thought this a strange thing to say before her daughter, and I observed that Mlle. Julie looked rather confused at her mother’s remark and blushed, but she did not say anything in reply. About this time, I made the acquaintance of a young girl called Isabelle, about whom I have already written in “Society Recollections in Paris and Vienna.” Isabelle was allowed more freedom than Mlle. Piétri, and was not always with her mother, and I found out that Madame Piétri may have been right in her conjectures. Nevertheless, I cannot help thinking that French girls are treated rather too severely in this respect, and that if they were permitted a little more liberty, they would not suffer so much as their mothers suppose.

In Paris, at this time, I had many friends among girls, but few among young fellows of my own age. I cannot say that I was in love with any of the former; indeed, I felt quite indifferent towards them. I certainly admired Isabelle very much at first, but only for a time, and was almost glad when our flirtation came to an end. Such, however, is the perversity of human nature, that no sooner had I lost her than I began to regret her. After some weeks had passed I saw her again, when I believed that she had deceived me with an American, and was not worthy of my regret. She informed me that this American had made her certain proposals, which she had refused; but I had a strong suspicion that this was not the case, and that her admirer had afterwards left Paris. I never met her again. She suddenly disappeared, and, though I was very curious to learn what had become of her, I was never able to find out. She vanished like some fantastic apparition, leaving no trace whatever behind, or like a pebble cast into the water, which leaves only a momentary impression on the surface to indicate the spot where it has disappeared.

Some time afterwards I made the acquaintance of a Mlle. de Laval, who was poor, but of a very noble family. Her ancestors had been Ducs de Laval, and she was related to some of the old noblesse of the time of Louis XVI. They had almost all been guillotined, and but few members of her family remained. She frequently told me stories about her ancestors, some of whom had been reduced to poverty. Mlle. de Laval was an intimate friend of a Mlle. Gabrielle de Tercin, a very pretty actress, who played at the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre. I was a good deal in the company of these girls, and used often to sup with them after the theatre. Mlle. de Tercin had a friend who was very wealthy, and had furnished a fine _appartement_ for her, to which I sometimes went with Mlle. de Laval.

Another acquaintance of mine was a certain baroness, the widow of an attaché in Paris. She was at one time considered a very lovely woman, and certainly possessed very fine auburn hair and a very good complexion. She had a pretty hôtel in the Rue Lord Byron, where she received a great many visitors in the evening, chiefly of the sterner sex. She told me once that the old Duc de Persigny had called upon her when she was alone and handed her an envelope.

“_Qu’est-ce que c’est que cela?_” she asked.

To which he replied in trembling tones:—

“_Oh, Madame, ce n’est qu’une petite fleur, rien qu’une petite fleur ... que je viens vous offrir._”

She opened the envelope and found that it contained fourteen thousand francs in banknotes. She at once threw the notes in the ducal donor’s face, saying:—

“_Sortez, Monsieur, à l’instant de chez moi; je ne veux ni de vous ni de votre petite fleur non plus._”

The Duke entreated her to listen to him, but she only added:—

“_Entendez-vous, je veux que vous sortiez d’ici._”

Whereupon he withdrew, and she never set eyes on him again, so she told me. I met her years afterwards in Vienna, when she was not so rich, and, though nearly sixty, was dressed more like sixteen and painted up to her eyes. She told me that Austrians were not so generous as Frenchmen, but that she preferred Englishmen to all others. She was now inclined to regret her treatment of the Duc de Persigny, though she laughed at the recollection of it still. Prince Rudolf von Liechtenstein called upon her in Vienna and sent her some beautiful flowers, when she remarked to me:—

“To think that I have to content myself in Vienna with flowers! But the Austrians are all so terribly mean.”

Amongst my mother’s friends in Paris society at this time was Madame Leleu, whom she saw very frequently. Madame Leleu was a widow, and lived in a large _appartement_ close to the Madeleine. When her husband was alive, she was very fond of dining with him at different restaurants, but since his death she had lived very quietly, and merely invited a few friends like ourselves to tea with her at five o’clock. Before her marriage she had been a Miss Beauclerk, and the Duke of St. Albans was her grandfather. She had at one time been engaged to Lord Cantelupe, but on her wedding day, while she was actually waiting in her bridal dress at the altar, she was informed that Lord Cantelupe had died quite suddenly. She told me about this sad event herself one day when she was visiting her aunt, Mrs. Healey, in the Rue d’Albe, but I don’t remember what was the cause of Lord Cantelupe’s death.

My mother also saw a good deal of the Duchesse de Grammont, who was a daughter of The MacKinnon of MacKinnon. She was very clever, though somewhat stiff in her manner, and while her husband was living gave some very smart dinner-parties. The Duchess had a fine house at Folkestone, a place of which she was very fond; but after her husband’s death she would sometimes let this house for the season at forty guineas a week. Her son, the present Duc de Grammont, married a daughter of Baron James de Rothschild, one of the Paris family of that name. The Hon. Mrs. Graves, a first cousin of the Duchess, who always stayed with her when in Paris, was a very great friend of my mother, and often dined with us in the Rue d’Albe.

The Duchesse de Caracciolo, an American by birth, who was remarkably good-looking and very “_spirituelle_,” was a great deal in Paris at this time, and frequently came to see my mother, who was very fond of her. My mother always told me that the Duchess was just the kind of lady I should have admired; but, as Fate would have it, I was not fortunate enough to meet her in Paris.

Mrs. Goldsmid, a Roman Catholic and the daughter of a baronet, who lived with her son in the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, was also a friend of my parents, and she was very intimate with the Duchesse de Grammont, whom, with her sons, the Duc de Guiche and the Comte de Grammont, I met sometimes of an evening at her house. I met them more frequently after Mrs. Goldsmid’s son married a very beautiful English girl, when the Duchess frequently dined there. After dinner we used to play cards, of which Goldsmid was very fond. He was at one time a great friend of my father, and they used to attend races together near Paris. He and his mother knew all the best people in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, as well as in the American colony. The son, before his marriage, which ended most disastrously for the wife, chiefly frequented the society of Americans, while his mother, who was a most intelligent woman, was fonder of the French. The conversation at their house, when guests happened to be present, was always carried on in French, as both mother and son spoke the language perfectly.

One day, when we were walking in the Champs-Elysées, my father pointed a man out to me whom, he said, he would not care to know at any price. He was a tall, well-built, fine-looking man, with a long fair beard. His name was Baron de Malortie, and he was a first cousin of Bismarck. I asked my father why he would not care to know him, to which he replied:—

“Because he is always fighting duels; he has fought about thirty in Paris, and has always killed or wounded his adversary.”

Some months later, I happened to be again in the Champs-Elysées, when I saw my father in the distance, walking arm-in-arm with a man whom I thought resembled Malortie. In the evening I asked him with whom he was walking in so friendly a fashion in the Champs-Elysées that afternoon.

“It was Malortie,” he answered. “He is such a nice fellow; I don’t know anyone I like better!”

On one occasion my father was walking with two friends of his in Paris, when he turned to one of them, a Mr. Segrave, and said:—

“I don’t think you know my friend....”

When the gentleman addressed promptly replied in a loud voice:—

“No, and I have no wish to know him either.”

My father told me that ever since then he had avoided introducing men to each other, as one never knew whether they had not had some quarrel, as was the case in this instance.

[Illustration: The Author’s Father.

[_To face p. 144._]

My father was subject to frequent fits of absent-mindedness, and I recollect once in Paris telling him a long story, and asking his opinion from time to time. He answered merely in monosyllables, and when I came to the end, and inquired what conclusion he had arrived at about the whole affair, he observed:—

“I was not listening to what you said, and have not the faintest idea what you were telling me about.”

Once, in Paris, he invited some people to dine at our house, but forgot to tell my mother about it, so that when the guests arrived, there was no dinner prepared for them, and everything had to be sent for from a restaurant, which, of course, entailed great delay. On another occasion, there were seven or eight people dining with us, amongst whom was General Sir John Douglas, Lady Elizabeth Douglas, Captain and Mrs. Berkeley, the Marquise Brian de Bois-Guilbert and Mrs. Joe Riggs. When the soup, which my father was supposed to serve, was put on the table, he was so engaged in conversation with Lady Elizabeth Douglas, that he unconsciously helped himself to it, and began calmly to eat, talking all the while. My mother, having drawn Captain Berkeley’s attention to what the host was doing, the latter said, laughing:—

“I say, old fellow, I hope you are enjoying the soup, but all this time you are keeping us waiting, and we should like to enjoy it as well.”

My father then realized what he had done, apologized and said:—

“Upon my word, I am so absent-minded that I did not know what I was doing.”

In later years, while in India, I made the acquaintance of the Vicomte Arthur d’Assailly, and, meeting him afterwards in Paris, was invited to call upon him at his hôtel in the Rue Las Cases. I happened to mention this to my father, when he told me that I should be careful about the people whom I called on, as there were so many adventurers in Paris. Some months later, I went with my father to a club, where someone slapped him on the back, and, to my great surprise, it was none other than d’Assailly. My father then told me that he had known him for years, and that he was an excellent fellow, but that he must have been thinking of something else when I asked whether I should call on him, and so did not catch the name I had mentioned, and thought I had come across some adventurer or other.

The Baroness Adelsdorfer gave my father one day, when he happened to call upon her, a very important letter to post, which he promised to put into the letter-box as he was going out. She told him that she wanted an immediate answer to this letter, so that he was to post it at once. He carried this letter about with him for a whole week, when, in my presence, he suddenly discovered it in his pocket. On his returning to the Baroness, she asked him about this letter, to which she was still awaiting a reply.

“Oh! I posted it all right, depend upon it,” he replied, laughing. “There has been some delay somewhere.”

The Baroness, however, knew him of old, and exclaimed:—

“I know you must have forgotten to post it; I should not be surprised if you still have it in your pocket.”

I met the Baroness Adelsdorfer once at Longchamps, near the entrance to the Grand Stand, just before the races began, when, stepping out of her carriage—a very fine turn-out—she came up to me very excitedly, and exclaimed:—

“It is really too bad of your father. I have been waiting here for him for half an hour, as he promised to get me a ticket for the Jockey Club Stand, and I don’t see the least sign of him.”

My father, as a matter of fact, had forgotten all about the poor Baroness, and did not put in an appearance at Longchamps that day. However, the lady fortunately managed to get the ticket she wanted from some other member of the club.

At this time, my father used to be always with Captain Lennox Berkeley (afterwards Earl of Berkeley), and I recollect his saying to me on several occasions:—

“Whenever I have a difficult business letter to write, I always ask Berkeley’s advice. I never met anyone who could write such a good business letter as he can.”

Once, when Berkeley was away from Paris, he said to me:

“I wish Berkeley were here; I have such a bothering letter to write and he could do it so well for me.”

I offered to try my hand at this letter, and composed one which he said would answer the purpose. But I discovered afterwards that he had torn it up, and, later, he admitted having done so, saying:—

“You cannot write like Berkeley; I don’t know anybody else who can.”

While on the subject of letter-writing, I may mention that my mother frequently expressed regret that she had not kept the letters written to her by her aunt, Lady Caroline Murray, observing that they were so well written and so beautifully expressed that they were quite equal in every respect to those of Madame de Sévigné.

I took lessons in fencing at this time from Dusauty, who had been in the “Cent Gardes” during the Empire, though Sir Edward Cunninghame, a well-known duellist in Paris, had advised my learning from Pons, who had been his instructor. I liked the way Dusauty taught me very much. He was one of the finest fencers whom I had ever seen, and taught some of the most redoubtable duellists, who often came to fence with him just before a duel. I fenced with some of them when Dusauty happened to be engaged in giving another lesson, which was a great pleasure to me. Dusauty was quite young, only seven-and-twenty, a very fine-looking, dark man, six feet, two inches in height. Unhappily, he died not long afterwards. His death, it was said, was attributable to the constant shouting and the amount of dust which he was obliged to inhale while engaged in giving his fencing lessons, which caused him to contract the lung disease which proved fatal. I learned to fence with both hands, and preferred fencing with my left hand to my right. In after years, I lost the use of my right arm, and Colonel Crawley, an Old Etonian, who was then in my regiment, though he afterwards exchanged into the Coldstream Guards, and with whom I often used to fence, remarked that it seemed as though I had foreseen that I should one day lose the use of that arm.

When Captain Berkeley went to live at Fontainebleau with his wife and family, my father was mostly with Lord Henry Paget, who afterwards became Marquis of Anglesey. Lord Henry’s only son, who, when his father succeeded to the marquisate, became Earl of Uxbridge, was a charming little boy, with very pleasing manners, who was generally dressed as a British sailor. He lived at this time almost entirely with the Boyds, and his aunt, Mrs. Yorke, had charge of him until he went to Eton. My father and I used frequently to meet him in the Champs-Elysées with his governess, when he would always run up to us to have a chat. His father, the Marquis of Anglesey, was very fond of horses, as was my father, and their tastes were pretty much the same. They were both greatly attached to Paris, though neither of them could really speak French, their knowledge of which was confined to a few words. Lord Anglesey, indeed, never even tried to speak the language, and avoided French people who could not talk English. My father, on the other hand, rather liked to meet them, and contrived somehow to make himself understood. The racing in the neighbourhood of Paris was a great attraction to both Lord Anglesey and my father, but I do not think the former ever made a bet. I cannot say the same for the latter, who sometimes betted rather heavily. Lord Anglesey was particularly fond of dining at restaurants, where he and my father in later years often dined together, sometimes inviting other friends. After dinner, as they both detested theatres, they played billiards, of which they were very fond, as they both played a very good game. Neither of them cared for balls and parties, and they both, as a rule, hated all kinds of ceremony. After dinner they liked to smoke a pipe, though they were at times fond of a good Havana cigar. This was somewhat difficult to procure in Paris, but M. de Francisco-Martin, of the Guatemala Legation, would often make my father a present of a box of cigars, which he received direct from Havana free of any duty, as he belonged to the Corps Diplomatique. The society which they preferred was that which attached little importance to matters of etiquette and ceremonial, except on certain occasions, as, for instance, when Lord Lyons, the British Ambassador, dined with Lord Anglesey. Then everything was carried to the other extreme, the Marquis priding himself on making a very great display in the way of silver plate and beautiful flowers, while the very best dinner which Madame Chevet, of the Palais-Royal, could supply, together with the choicest wines and liqueurs, was provided. An American lady, whom the Marquis admired very much, was usually invited to preside and entertain the Ambassador.

There was an Englishman in Paris whose name was Field, and at one time Lord Anglesey was on rather friendly terms with him; but one day the Marquis told my father that he gave himself airs, so that he intended to drop his acquaintance. Field was a very short, dark, clean-shaven man, more like an American than an Englishman. He used to receive every afternoon, when he was with the Marquis, my father and myself, various lavender-coloured notes, highly perfumed, on receiving which he would exclaim:

“Another letter from —— ——!” mentioning the name of a celebrated actress.

I asked him once, when he had given me the note to read, if she often wrote to him in that style, to which he replied that sometimes he received such notes from her every hour in the day. After Lord Anglesey had quarrelled with him I never met him again in Paris. I think he must have gone away, or perhaps he used to avoid the spot in the Champs Elysées where the Marquis and my father generally sat from five to six in the afternoon, to watch the carriages go by.

Lord Anglesey occupied a very fine _appartement_ in the Avenue Kléber, which he rented when he was still Lord Henry Paget. I recollect my father and I meeting him in the Champs-Elysées just after his half-brother’s death, when the former congratulated him on having succeeded to the title, and the new Marquis said:—

“I shall only have about £80,000 a year at present, I think, but perhaps more later, as my brother was heavily insured.”

Some days afterwards, my father asked him whether he intended to put his servants into powder, when he replied:—

“I am afraid I can’t afford that yet, as I should have to keep at least twelve footmen, six in powder, and the other six to relieve them; but later on I may be able to manage it; at least, I hope so.”

The windows of Lord Anglesey’s _appartement_ facing the street were furnished with very conspicuous pink-coloured blinds, adorned on the outside with very large coronets, which caused a good deal of comment. I remember asking Lord Conyers, who was a friend of the Marquis, why the latter was so fond of displaying these large coronets on almost everything he used, and that Lord Conyers answered that Lord Anglesey had inherited this taste, which was a purely French one, from the French Kings, Louis XIV. and Louis XV., to whom his ancestors were related, but that in other respects his habits and ways were entirely English.

Folliot Duff and his wife and daughters were then living in Paris. He was a brother of Billy Duff, whose widow also resided there. Folliot Duff was a good boxer, and in Paris he conceived a great passion for fencing. I often called on the Duffs, when he invariably used to turn the conversation to his favourite hobby. He was a very agreeable man, but I never remember seeing him without his giving me a lecture on fencing, or occasionally, by way of a change, on boxing. Mrs. Folliot Duff was a very great friend of my mother, and, after her husband’s death, she used often to come and dine with us.

M. de Francisco-Martin, son of the Minister for Guatemala, and brother-in-law of the Marquis de San Carlos, formerly Spanish Ambassador in Paris, was also a great friend of the Duffs. He lived in a very fine hôtel in the Rue Fortin, which he sold to the Marquis of Anglesey for £40,000. The latter, however, only lived there a month with his last wife. Francisco-Martin often used to pay us a visit of an evening, when his conversation ran mainly on horses and racing, for which he shared my father’s partiality.

I used occasionally to visit the daughters of the Minister for Venezuela, who lived in a very fine _appartement_ on the Avenue d’Iéna. One of them, who was then about sixteen, was an exceedingly pretty girl, with blue eyes, jet black hair, small but beautiful features, and very white teeth, and the way in which she spoke Spanish was charming to listen to, so soft did it sound. I often went to her _appartement_, when she would invite me to take tea, and sometimes I found her alone, as her sister, who was engaged to be married, was generally with her _fiancé_. The younger sister, whose name was Mercèdes, made me speak Spanish to her at times; at others we spoke French, and the time I spent with her seemed to pass very quickly—too quickly, indeed, to please me.

I recollect calling one day on Madame de Passy and meeting there the Marchioness de Peñafiel, whose husband afterwards succeeded the Count de San Miguel as Portuguese Minister in Paris. The Marchioness was wearing that day a very pretty hat covered with white flowers, for which, she told Madame de Passy, she had just given 300 francs. As she was on the point of leaving, it began to rain, and although the Marchioness’s gorgeous equipage was waiting at the door for her, she was so fearful lest her mew hat should be spoiled, that, with Madame de Passy’s help, she covered it entirely over with a lace handkerchief, and then advanced bravely to her carriage, escorted by a footman, holding an umbrella over her head. The Marchioness de Peñafiel was a great friend of the Minister for Venezuela and his lovely daughters, of whom I have just spoken.

One day, when I happened to be visiting the Shards, who lived in the same house as Madame de Passy, I was telling the second daughter, Sophie Shard, a good-looking young girl, what trouble I had to get a good valet, when she said:—

“Why don’t you take a pretty girl and dress her in a page’s costume? I am sure she would suit you much better than a boy. I should do this if I were you, and I know you will be grateful to me for the advice I have given you, if you only follow it.”

I thought her idea, which reminded me of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, excellent, but, as I was not my own master, I could not quite see my way to carry it out.

About this time, I made the acquaintance of Madame Saba, who lived in the same _appartement_ as Mlle. Daram, of the Grand Opéra. The latter was a very pretty girl, with an exquisite figure, who possessed a fine contralto voice. She made it a rule to get up at seven o’clock every morning to practice her singing, and never broke it. She always played page’s parts, for which she was paid 18,000 francs a year, and, though she had a friend, a French marquis, who had about £16,000 a year, and wanted her to give up the stage, she refused to do so, saying that she wished to be quite independent. The _appartement_ in which these two ladies lived was furnished with every comfort and convenience one could possibly wish for, including a good library; and one day when they happened to be out when I called, I was given Labiche’s plays to read to amuse me until their return.

There was an Irish lady residing in Paris, who used to give a dance once a fortnight during the winter. I recollect that amongst her guests on one occasion was a French countess, who wore a gown which was very _décolletée_ indeed, so much so that several English ladies commented upon it. The lady of the house mentioned this to a young French count, who observed:—

“_On aime à voir ces choses, mais on n’aime pas qu’on vous les fasse voir._” Saying which, he borrowed a shawl from his hostess, and, stepping up to the countess, put it over her shoulders, telling her that all the ladies were so much afraid lest she should take cold. The countess, who was watching a game of whist at the time, thanked him for the attention without taking her eyes off the cards, and then pulled the shawl tighter round her shoulders.

Miss Fanny Parnell, who was half Irish and half American, was then one of the loveliest girls in Paris. She was also one of the best dressed and most attractive in every way. She was a severe critic of her own sex, and her opinion of English girls was not a high one. On one occasion she wrote to me:—

“_I think, as you do, that English girls are, many of them, very fast. They seem to be so anxious to get rid of their reputation for being dull and stiff that they set no bounds to their liveliness._”

On another occasion, when I told her that I was going to Folkestone, she observed:

“The girls in Kent, what I saw of them, were each one uglier than the other. So your fate is, I fear, not to be envied, knowing as I do your strong _penchant_ for pretty faces.”

Miss Fanny Parnell died very young, quite in the flower of her youth, in the United States; but the report I read in a newspaper to the effect that Mrs. Parnell died there afterwards in poverty was, I am pleased to say, incorrect, for her daughter, Mrs. Paget, informed me some years ago that when Mrs. Parnell died she was with her in Ireland, and that she was surrounded by every possible luxury.

Miss Minnie Warren, an American from Boston, who afterwards married a Vanderbilt, was one of the loveliest young girls I ever met. She was then living with her parents in an hôtel on the Boulevard Haussmann, and I used frequently to meet her at parties and balls given by wealthy Americans. One afternoon I went to tea at her house, as I always did by invitation two or three times a week, and found her father sitting down reading _The Times_. He never so much as looked at me, but went on reading, while I sat silent and feeling far from comfortable, until Mrs. Warren came in and said:—

“I suppose you have come to see my daughters; they will be home soon.”

I felt very much relieved when, a few minutes after, I was shown into the charming daughters’ salon, where I felt, as I always did, “_au septième ciel_.”

Another remarkably pretty girl whom I knew was Mlle. Waterlot, whose acquaintance I made through the Marquise Brian de Bois Guilbert. I introduced her to Miss Parnell, as she wanted to go to some American balls. She found, however, her inability to speak English a great drawback at these functions, as American young men did not care to talk French, which entailed too much mental exertion to please them. Mlle. Waterlot married some time afterwards the Comte de Lesseps, a son of the famous engineer of the Suez Canal.