ournful eyes; a manner touching and majestic. She was then very
_devote_. Pauline was empty-headed, selfish and vain, cared only for
luxury, but in every line exquisite as Canova's statue represents her.
Hortense was not really handsome--irregular features, a wide mouth
exposing the gums and defective teeth, a blemish in her mother, whose
faultless figure, kindly nature and caressing manner she also inherited.
She was lovely at the harp, and sang her own _romances_ in a sweet
voice."

Among the few celebrities of her day unknown by Mme. Bonaparte was
Byron, who had expressed a great wish to meet her, so his friend Captain
Medway told her. "I hate a dumpy woman," says the noble bard; and to
that complexion did the Guiccioli come at last. Mme. Bonaparte knew her
well--"a shower of golden curls; fair, with blue eyes, unlike the
typical Italian; teeth and hands perfect; naive and sweet of temper.
Byron, she said, took a woman's care of his beauty; slept in gloves--he
was so proud of his hands--and kept bits of cotton between his teeth to
preserve their regularity."

In 1839, Mme. Bonaparte writes to Lady Morgan from Paris: "Death, time
and absence have left me hardly an acquaintance here.... I hardly know
which is most distressing--to hear that our friends have gone to the
other world or have forgotten us in this.... My son is gone from Geneva
to Italy to visit his relatives and to see after a legacy which his
grand-uncle, Cardinal Fesch, had the goodness to leave him.... I have
grown fat, old and dull--good reasons for persons not to think me an
intelligent listener. They mistake: I have exactly the talent to
appreciate the powers of others. Poor Mme. Junot made a sad end, the
natural consequence of her prodigality: her pecuniary difficulties, it
is said, caused her death. I liked her very much, and felt pained at the
misery caused by her want of judgment. Her heart was generous and
warm.... I know not if the late princess Charlotte, daughter of Joseph
Bonaparte, was of your acquaintance: she possessed some mental
superiority and many noble qualities."

"Lady Morgan," says Mme. Bonaparte, "was brilliant in wit, good-natured
and flattering; short, with sparkling eyes; her hair close cut, in dark
curls. 'Why is it,' she said to me, 'that you speak French perfectly,
but English with such an American drawl?'--'For the same reason
probably that yours is a brogue'--one of the miseries of her life."

"BALTIMORE, 1849.... No o