c, otherwise he would have made himself familiar with its contents
as in the case of all the rest of the Nabob's correspondence. This
person is his _valet de chambre_, M. Noel, to whom I had the honour
of being introduced last Friday at a small evening-party of persons in
service which he gave to all his friends. I record an account of this
function in my memoirs as one of the most curious things which I have
seen in the course of my four years of sojourn in Paris.

I had thought at first when M. Francis, Monpavon's _valet de chambre_,
spoke to me of the thing, that it was a question of one of those little
clandestine junketings such as are held sometimes in the garrets of our
boulevards with the fragments of food brought up by Mlle. Seraphine and
the other cooks in the building, at which you drink stolen wine, and
gorge yourself, sitting on trunks, trembling with fear, by the light
of a couple of candles which are extinguished at the least noise in the
corridors. These secret practices are repugnant to my character. But
when I received, as for the regular servants' ball, an invitation
written in a very beautiful hand upon pink paper:

"M. Noel rekwests M---- to be present at his evenin-party on the 25th
instent. Super will be provided"

I saw clearly, not withstanding the defective spelling, that it was a
question of something serious and authorized. I dressed myself therefore
in my newest frock-coat, my finest linen, and arrived at the Place
Vendome at the address indicated by the invitation.

For the giving of his party, M. Noel had taken advantage of a
first-night at the opera, to which all fashionable society was
thronging, thus giving the servants a free rein, and putting the entire
place at our disposal until midnight. Notwithstanding this, the host
had preferred to receive us upstairs in his own bed-chamber, and this I
approved highly, being in that matter of the opinion of the old fellow
in the rhyme:

Fie on the pleasure
That fear may corrupt!

But my word, the luxury on the Place Vendome! A felt carpet on the
floor, the bed hidden away in an alcove, Algerian curtains with red
stripes, an ornamental clock in green marble on the chimneypiece, the
whole lighted by lamps of which the flames can be regulated at will. Our
oldest member, M. Chalmette, is not better lodged at Dijon. I arrived
about nine o'clock with Monpavon's old Francis, and I must confess that
my entry made a sensation, preceded a