"Believe me, London is not without its pendants to such amusements." "But not enjoyable in the same easy way," cried my friend. "In the first place, you English bore yourselves with full dress for every thing, while in France it is held to the last degree vulgar to appear en grande toilette between Easter and Christmas. Our jewels, our finery are laid aside; a muslin gown and a pretty bonnet suffice for the gayest occasions." "Even at court?" "Even at court, when their majesties have once established themselves at Neuilly or St. Cloud. But I am referring to my own position. People in general quit Paris for their country-houses the first week in May. We French have a foolish prejudice in favour of green woods and green fields, which induces us to migrate in flocks like wild geese on the approach of winter, and while away. its dulness in social pleasures, returning to the country the moment the roses are in bloom. In this instance, as in coachmanship, we take the right of the road, and you the left." In spite of Madame de Mérinville's sauciness, we parted good friends, and she has even promised to come and visit me next year, in the country with which she deals so unceremoniously. The Marchioness de Bretonvilliers took leave of me with more courtesy, but less kindness. I had not seen her since her formal dîner de famille of forty persons, in honour of the young Princess of Aspern's wedding, in which I was exclusively included. The chilling ceremonies of the signature of the marriage contract, and the overpowering dinner, impressed me unfavourably. Excuses are to be made for a royal mariage de convenance, but none for those of private life; nor shall I ever forget my sensations of sympathy in the false position of that lovely girl Malvina de Rochemore, when I saw her settled by a notary, like "a piece of meadow land," or "capital messuage," on a man with whom she had never been allowed to hold ten minutes of confidential conversation. Madame de Bretonvillers, by-the-way, complimented herself and me on the advantageous opinions I must have formed of French society. Few English, she said, enjoyed the opportunities conceded to myself of becoming acquainted with les intérieurs of the Faubourg St. Ger main; and it afforded her satisfaction that my views of Paris had not been limited to the vulgar mobs of the court of Louis Philippe, or the bad company of the Chaussée d'Antin! I have since had an unexpected insight into the paradise she represents as guarded by flaming swords against the approach of my country people. The Vauguyons, conscious of their want of hospitality towards a person by whose family their heir apparent was treated in England as l'enfant de la maison, insisted on giving me a farewell dinner; and, stately as I had found the Hotel de Bretonvilliers, its formalities were far exceeded by those of the Hotel de la Vanguyon. I admit, there is something vastly grand-seigneurial in the aspect of the place and its inhabitants. Neither the revolution nor the usurpation seems to have exercised the slightest influence on its feudal attitude. The family occupy the whole hotel, as in those former times when every nobleman had his appartement d'hiver on the first floor, and his appartement d'été on the rez-de-chaussée, opening to the garden. The picture-gallery boasts, in addition to several chefs-d'œuvre, a variety of family portraits, from the middle ages and their coats of mail, to the age of Louis XV., with its coats of velvet; while the exceeding ugliness of the arras hangings bespoke them to be antecedent to Colbert and his Gobelins. The society assembled in these antique saloons was in good keeping with the local. The men bowed rectangularly, as if accustomed to porter l'épée; while the ladies spread their brocaded skirts over the massive fauteuils, as if unhabituated to garments of lighter texture. Their tone of conversation was as empty, but far less pompous, than that of the Bretonvilliers set, which is less securely seated in its honours; and there was a kindliness and courtesy about the elder members of the Vanguyon family, which impressed me with a better idea of le bon-ton d'autrefois, than anything I have seen in Paris. Captivating, indeed, must have been those graces of manner which could throw a veil over the stern armour of feudal arrogance, and conceal the foul corruption of "the reeling goddess with the zoneless waist," whose worship succeeded. I was singularly struck by the business-like tone of frankness with which the old duchess and the marchio ness her daughter-in-law (mother to Alfred) alluded to the expectation they had once entertained of my becoming a member of their family. With a degree of coolness which in England we should consider want of delicacy, they informed me that Alfred had written from Spa, setting forth his attachment, and the advantages of the match, his report of which having received due confirmation from their relation the ambassador in England, they instantly sanctioned his proposals. "But my grandson is neither a fat nor a fool," said the duchess, swallowing her five-and-twentieth tablette de jujubes. "Soon after your arrival in Paris he perceived that his attentions were not acceptable, and did ample justice to the honourable spirit in which you made him conscious of the fruitlessness of proceeding to definite overtures. We should have been infinitely flattered, madame, to have received the cousin of our charming friend Lady Cecilia Delavan into the Vanguyon family; but, since it was not to be, we heartily thank you for enabling our dear Alfred still to pretend to the happiness of your friendship." I like the freedom from affectation of these people. Without seeking oracles of wisdom under the painted ceilings of the old hotel, I might perhaps have passed some pleasant hours in their society, had I not been apprehensive of encouraging the attentions of the little count. There is something respectable in the mutual dependance of the family union of the Vanguyons; the well-understood subordination of three generations united under one roof. I doubt whether I could myself endure to live as part of such a community, a mere sharer of the general affection. We English are neither born nor bred with the humility of hearts which renders marriage so much less awful a change here than among ourselves. When an English home becomes imbittered by the consciousness of an injudicious choice, there is no refuge-no consolation. In our sense of wedded unity, "There where we have garnered up our hearts, Madame la Comtesse Alfred de la Vanguyon would be able to console herself for the ill-humours of a capricious mari in the tenderness of his mother, and agreeable companionship of his sisters and chatty old grandmother. Mrs. Colonel Delaval had no resource but the echoes of an empty house when left alone, day after day, by a neglected husband. And what a waste, alas! was her existence !-What a world of ennui was mine! At all events, if I prefer as a wife, perhaps as a mother, the selfish exclusiveness of an English home, with its repellent street-door and protecting chevaux de frise of ceremony-as a grandmother I should fly to Paris. French women seem to me to enjoy, after their première jeunesse, a second almost as delightful-an été de St. Martin, when midsummer and its roses are unregretted. But this seconde jeunesse supposes in French nature a certain hardness and polish of character, which causes the whips and stings of life to have glided off unfelt. My face and heart will wear many a scar and wrinkle before the arrival of autumn. However bright the sunset of my evening, the storms of the morning will leave their lingering tears to glitter on the leaves. Apropos of the dinner of the Hotel de la Vanguyon, I perceive that among all the blunders of all recent writers upon "Paris and the Parisians," there exists a hankering, real or affected, after the petits soupers of the last century. It happened that, at the period in question, Paris boasted two or three old women (Mesdames Geoffrin du Deffand and Baron d'Holbach) able and willing to assemble at their tables the wits and literati of Paris; and, because the fashionable dining-hour of three was inconvenient to professional men, supper was the meal selected for hospitality, and supper was thenceforward to become synonymous with wit and sociability. But in what do these nine-o'clock suppers differ from the seven-o'clock dinners of to-day, preceded as they are by the two-o'clock dejeûner à la fourchette, eaten also in England under the name of luncheon? Mrs. Trollope and her sister intellectuals persist in alluding to these petits soupers, as if their feast of reason and flow of soul were unaccompanied by grosser viands than gateaux à la Conti, or Chantilly creams. But is it not written in the chronicles of the book of Marmontel, that Madame Geoffrin's suppers consisted of a potage, a roast fowl, a plate of spinach or other vegetables, a dish of cutlets, and a salad, with a bottle or two of Bourdeaux, to be divided between nine or ten guests? and what is all this but an indifferent dinner-the dîner bourgeois of a Parisian of the present day? There was no possible reason that Mrs. T.'s dinner at old Madame Constant's should not have been quite as "symposiacal" as the suppers of old Madame Geoffrin, her predecessor. The coterie of the Abbaye aux Bois, on which Goody T. has moddled so many of her notions of Parisian society, is in fact, as much a byword here as the "précieuses ridicules" of the hotel de Rambouillet. "As a votary of the incomparable De Staël, and an admirer of her amiable and intelligent daughter, Madame de Broglie," said my good old general the uncle of Madame de Mérinville, when I interrogated him on the subject, "I occasionally visit Madame Recamier, and it grieves me to observe the fadaiseries into which the friends of my old friend have betrayed her. I meet at her house several distinguished literary men, whom I should rather qualify as men of letters than men of genius, and who, although rational enough in other times and places, begin to play the mountebank-the Monsieur Trissotin-the moment they set foot in L'Abbaye aux Bois! It is the tone of the place. Every one is expected to stand on his head; and a horse with five legs is supposed to have better paces than a horse with four. Et puis, they read their own tragedies, and cry at themand their own comedies, and laugh at them. Que voulez vous? The Abbaye aux Bois presents one of the most ridiculous scenes under the canopy of heaven." Heigho! I wish these people would read me one of their comedies, (or tragedies, which ?) that I might laugh in my turn, for sans rime ni raison, I feel miserably out of spirits. Everything looks smiling around me. The first balmy breathings of spring are perceptible; the buds on the tree, the blossoms on the bough, and the birds waking up new minstrelsy in the sunshine. Everything seems joyous, every one seems happy; and shall I-I so rich in all the worldly attributes of happiness, presume to despond amid the general exultation of the season? Let me not be overmastered by an idle spirit of repining without motive and without justification. Let me be gay and glad like all things else upon the earth. There is a blessing in the air Which seems a sense of joy to yield, |