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ous! I shall spoil my lovely satin gown, and be thought _bete_ to make a scene,' this reflection restored my serenity and enabled me to go through the ceremony with becoming dignity." "Si elle etait reine avec quelle grace elle regnerait," said Talleyrand after one of their witty jousts, in which he was not always victor. "She charms by her eyes while she slays with her tongue," said Count Crillon: if her unsparing repartee inspired wholesome fear, she disarmed by her tact, sportive manner and childlike laughter. "Had she been near the throne the Allies would have found it even more difficult to dispose of Napoleon," said Gortschakoff, that brilliant and fascinating Russian, noted even then for the astuteness and diplomatic resource that still steady the Russian helm through Disraelian and Bismarckian breakers, and who now, after fifty years, faithful in friendship, recalls to his _belle alliee_ the _guerre spirituelle epigrammatique_ of their bright spring-time. The duke of Buckingham and Chandos in his _Memoirs_ pays tribute to her talent, piquant charm and "untarnished name," while her enemy, Prince Napoleon--Plon-Plon--thus characterizes her: "Ambitieuse, un esprit indomptable, une reputation sans tache." She writes to Lady Morgan from Paris in 1825: "I passed only a few months in Rome, where I saw the most beautiful woman in the world, who has since died in her husband's palace in Florence, conjugally regretted by Prince Borghese. He buried her in the handsomest chapel in Europe. She left my son a legacy of twenty thousand francs.... I have paid a short visit to America. La Fayette was caressed, adored and substantially rewarded. I saw him, and talked to him of you, whom he loves and admires _malgre le temps et l'absence_. Fanny Wright was with or near him all the time he was in America. She is to write something of which he is to be the hero.... My son has grown up handsome--a classical profile and _un esprit juste_." At Rome, Mme. Bonaparte first met her imperial relatives, by all of whom she was affectionately welcomed except Madame Mere. "Qu'est-ce que vous allez faire a son sujet?" questioned Pauline Borghese. "Je n'y ferai rien;" and to this armed neutrality she adhered, though by request sending her son daily to see his grandmother, until at length overtures were made and the spirited daughter-in-law received with cordiality. "She was not tall," says Mme. Bonaparte; "features like her great son; fine m
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