company,
called a "rout." Two or three hundred individuals walk up and down the
rooms, the women arm-in-arm, for the men usually keep aside. In this
crowd one is pushed and jostled without end, so that it becomes very
fatiguing. But there is nothing to sit on. At one of these routs I
attended, an Englishman I knew in Italy caught sight of me. He came up
to me and said, in the midst of the profound silence that reigns at
all these parties, "Don't you think these gatherings are enjoyable?"
"You enjoy yourselves with what would bore us," I replied. I really
did not see what pleasure was to be got out of stifling in such a
crowd that you could not even reach your hostess.

[Illustration: GIRL WITH MUFF.]

Nor are the walks in London any livelier. The women walk together on
one side, all dressed in white; they are so taciturn, and so perfectly
placid, that they might be taken for perambulating ghosts. The men
hold aloof from them, and behave just as solemnly. I have sometimes
come upon a couple, and have amused myself, if I happened to follow
them awhile, by watching whether they would speak to each other. I
never saw any who did.

I went to the principal painters, and was mightily astonished to see
that they all had a large room full of portraits with nothing but the
heads done. I asked them why they thus exhibited their pictures before
finishing them. They all answered that the persons who had posed were
satisfied with being seen and mentioned, and that besides, the sketch
made, half the price was paid in advance, when the painter was
satisfied, too.

At London I saw many pictures by the renowned Reynolds; their
colouring is excellent, resembling that of Titian, but they are mostly
unfinished, except as to the head. I, however, admired a "Child
Samuel" by him, whose completeness and colouring both pleased me.
Reynolds was as modest as he was talented. When my portrait of M. de
Calonne arrived at the London custom-house, Reynolds, who had been
apprised of the fact, went to look at it. When the box was opened he
stood absorbed in the picture for a long space and praised it warmly.
Thereupon some nincompoop ejaculated, "That must be a fine portrait;
Mme. Lebrun was paid eighty thousand francs for it!" "I am sure,"
replied Reynolds, "I could not do it as well for a hundred thousand."

The London climate was the despair of this artist because of the
difficulty it offers to drying pictures, and he had invented, I heard,