afterwards to
be more generally admitted into society; but at this period she was
avoided by most people."

Her daughter's beauty was certainly marvellous, and when, under the
reign of Louis Philippe, American society had in Paris more than one
brilliant representative and more than one splendid centre of
hospitality, where all that was illustrious in the society of France
perpetually flocked, we make no doubt many of our countrymen noticed,
whether at theatre or concert or ball, the really queenlike air of
Mme. de Girardin, and the exquisitely classic profile, which,
enframed, as it were, by the capricious spirals of the lightest,
fairest flaxen hair, resembled the outline of some antique statue of a
Muse.

Delphine Gay and her mother were more the ornaments of the
_salon_ of the Duchesse d'Abrantes, perhaps, than of that of
Gerard; and as the former continued open long after the latter was
closed by death, not only the young girl, whose verses were so
immensely in fashion during the Restoration, was one of the constant
guests of Junot's widow, but she continued to be so as the wife of
Emile de Girardin, the intelligent and enterprising founder of the
newspaper "La Presse."

The _salon_ of the Duchesse d'Abrantes was one of the first of a
species which has since then found imitators by scores and hundreds
throughout France. It was the _salon_ of a person not in herself
sufficiently superior or even celebrated to attract the genuine
superiorities of the country without the accessory attractions of
luxury, and not sufficiently wealthy to draw around her by her
splendid style of receiving, and to disdain the bait held out to those
she invited by the presence of great "lions." Gerard gave to his
guests, at twelve o'clock at night, a cup of tea and "eternally the
same cakes" all the year round; but Gerard was the type of the great
honors rendered, as we have observed, to Art under the Empire, and to
his house men went as equals, whose daily occupations made them the
associates of kings. This was not the case with the Duchesse
d'Abrantes. She had notoriety, not fame. Her "Memoires" had been read
all through Europe, but it is to be questioned whether anything beyond
curiosity was satisfied by the book, and it certainly brought to its
author little or none of that which in France stands in lieu even of
fortune, but which is not easy to obtain, namely,--_consideration_.

The Duchesse d'Abrantes was rather popular than oth