dy conversed with his neighbour. Louis Bonaparte appeared to
prefer his neighbour on the right to his neighbour on the left. The
Marquise de Hallays is thirty-six years old, and looks her age. Fine
eyes, not much hair, an ugly mouth, white skin, a shapely neck, charming
arms, the prettiest little hands in the world, admirable shoulders. At
present she is separated from M. de Hallays. She has had eight children,
the first seven by her husband. She was married fifteen years ago.
During the early period of their marriage she used to fetch her husband
from the drawing-room, even in the daytime, and take him off to bed.
Sometimes a servant would enter and say: "Madame the Marquise is asking
for Monsieur the Marquis." The Marquis would obey the summons. This made
the company who happened to be present laugh. To-day the Marquis and
Marquise have fallen out.

"She was the mistress of Napoleon, son of Jerome, you know," said Prince
de la Moskowa to me, sotto voce, "now she is Louis's mistress."

"Well," I answered, "changing a Napoleon for a Louis is an everyday
occurrence."

These bad puns did not prevent me from eating and observing.

The two women seated beside the President had square-topped chairs. The
President's chair was surmounted with a little round top. As I was about
to draw some inference from this I looked at the other chairs and saw
that four or five guests, myself among them, had chairs similar to that
of the President. The chairs were covered with red velvet with gilt
headed nails. A more serious thing I noticed was that everybody
addressed the President of the Republic as "Monseigneur" and "your
Highness." I who had called him "Prince," had the air of a demagogue.

When we rose from table the Prince asked after my wife, and then
apologized profusely for the rusticity of the service.

"I am not yet installed," he said. "The day before yesterday, when I
arrived here, there was hardly a mattress for me to sleep upon."

The dinner was a very ordinary one, and the Prince did well to excuse
himself. The service was of common white china and the silverware
bourgeois, worn, and gross. In the middle of the table was a rather fine
vase of craquele, ornamented with ormolu in the bad taste of the time of
Louis XVI.

However, we heard music in an adjoining hall.

"It is a surprise," said the President to us, "they are the musicians
from the Opera."

A minute afterwards programmes written with a pen were hande