m had
put an end to hostilities the Viennese appeared disposed to accept the
truce and attend the brilliant entertainments and pleasant amusements
offered by Count Andreossy.

The latter was not the only person who opened his drawing-rooms to the
Viennese; others soon followed; fashionable Parisian society seemed for
the time to have transferred its gay circle from Paris to Vienna; to make
in the German imperial capital propaganda for the gay, intellectual, and
brilliant circle of the imperial capital of France.

Beautiful women, distinguished by illustrious names, by wealth and charm,
suddenly appeared in Vienna, opened their drawing-rooms, and seemed to make
it their object to reconcile the hostile elements of French and German
society, smooth away contrasts and bring them together.

Among these ladies whom the victory brought to Vienna, the beautiful Madame
de Simonie was conspicuous as a brilliant and unusual person. She was
young, lovely, endowed with rare intellectual gifts, understood how to do
the honors of her drawing-room with the most subtle tact, and was better
suited than any one to act as mediator between the Viennese and the French,
since she herself belonged to both nations. A German by birth, she had
married a Frenchman, lived several years in Paris with her husband, one of
the richest bankers in the capital, and now, being widowed, had come to
Vienna in order, as she said, to divert the minds of her countrymen from
the great grief which the loss of their beloved capital caused them.

Beautiful Leonore de Simonie certainly appeared to be thoroughly in earnest
in her purpose to divert their minds from their great grief. Every evening
her drawing-rooms were thrown open for the reception of guests; every
evening all the generals, French courtiers, and people who belonged to
good society in France were present; every evening more and more Germans
and Viennese went to Madame de Simonie's, until it seemed as if she
afforded Viennese and Parisian society a place of meeting where, forgetting
mutual aversion and hatred, they associated in love and harmony.

To be a visitor at Madame de Simonie's therefore soon became a synonym of
aristocracy in the new fashionable society of Vienna, which was composed of
so many different elements. The foreigners who had come to the Austrian
capital, attracted by the renown of the French emperor, or led by
selfishness, strove with special earnestness to obtain the _entree_ to