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