ed
to nestle--when she had vanished "it seemed like the ceasing of
exquisite music." Madame la comtesse congratulated me on her appearance,
and afterward on her success. The emperor had distinguished her in a
very flattering manner, and Eugenie, looking earnestly at her, said to
the comtesse, "Nothing is so beautiful as youth," perhaps beginning to
regret her own. No one had made so decided a sensation.

At Madame Le Fort's next reception there was a sudden influx of new
guests--a young Belgian baron of old historic name, slim and stiff as a
poker; a brisk French viscount, who told me that he had been connected
with the embassy at Washington, and had quite fallen in love with our
institutions; an Italian chevalier, a Russian prince.

Ugliness has its compensations, thought I. Nobody makes such a fuss over
a pretty girl at home (they are not so uncommon), and I will never bring
one to Paris again. Thank Heaven! we are going to Italy soon.

* * * * *

The piercing Tramontane came down upon us in the Bay of Naples with so
fierce a blast that we doubted if we were not in Iceland, and were glad
to make our escape to Rome, where we found an asylum in the Hotel de
Minerve, not far from the Pantheon. Many of the old palaces and convents
of Italy have been transformed into hotels. This was the ancient palace
of the princes of Conti. I was so captivated by the superb dining-room
that the quality of the dinners made but a faint impression. What! eat
in the presence of all those marble goddesses, looking down upon us,
serene and cold, as if from their thrones on the starry Olympus! Or if I
turned my eyes resolutely away from Juno, Ceres and Minerva, they were
sure to be snared by the dancing-girls of Pompeii stepping out from the
frescoed walls, or inextricably entangled in the lovely garlands of
fruit and flowers that wound their mazy way along the borders.

One evening, while we were waiting for one of the endless courses of a
table-d'hote dinner, my wandering eyes were caught by the most perfect
human head I had ever seen. It seemed that of the youthful Lord Byron,
so well known in busts and engravings--the same small head with high
forehead and clustering dark-brown curls, the perfectly-moulded chin,
the full, ripe beauty of the lips. The eyes were a deep blue, but I
thought them black at first, they were so darkly shaded by the thick
black lashes. I am convinced that Byron must have had just