wed that this lady was worthy to be the mother of the
young man who, one day, pointing to a sheet of stamped paper, on which
a bill of exchange might be drawn, said: "You see that; it is worth
five sous now; but if I sign my name to it, it will be worth nothing!"
This was a speech made by Junot's eldest son, known in Paris as the
Duc d'Abrantes, and as the intimate friend of Victor Hugo, from whom
at one time he was almost inseparable.

The eccentric personage we have just spoken of--the Duchesse
d'Abrantes--died in the year 1838, in a garret, upon a truckle-bed,
provided for her by the charity of a friend. The royal family paid the
expenses of her funeral, and Chateaubriand, accompanied by nearly
every celebrity of the literary world, followed on foot behind her
coffin, from the church to the burying-ground.

Madame d'Abrantes may be considered as the inventor, in France, of
what has since become so widely spread under the name of _les salons
picaresques_, and of what, at the present day, is famous under the
appellation of the _demi-monde_. Her example has been followed
by numberless imitators, and now, instead of presuming (as was the
habit formerly) that those only receive who are rich enough to do so,
it is constantly inquired, when any one in Paris opens his or her
house, whether he or she is ruined, and whether the _soirees_
given are meant merely to throw dust into people's eyes. The history
of the tea-spoons--so singular at the moment of its occurrence--has
since been parodied a hundred times over, and sometimes by mistresses
of houses whose fortune was supposed to put them far above all such
expedients. Madame d'Abrantes, we again say, was the founder of a
_genre_ in Paris society, and as such is well worth studying. The
_genre_ is by no means the most honorable, but it is one too
frequently found now in the social centres of the French capital for
the essayist on Paris _salons_ to pass it over unnoticed.

The _salon_ of Mme. Recamier is one of a totally different order,
and the world-wide renown of which may make it interesting to the
reader of whatever country. As far as age was concerned, Mme.
Recamier was the contemporary of Mme. d'Abrantes, of Gerard, nay,
almost of Mme. Lebrun; for the renown of her beauty dates from the
time of the French Revolution, and her early friendships associate her
with persons who even had time to die out under the first Empire; but
the _salon_ of Madame Recamier was among th