aving sought society, no one gave themselves any
trouble on our account for the first three or four months of our
residence in Paris. At the end of that period, however, I made my
_debut_ at, probably, as brilliant an entertainment as one usually sees
here in the course of a whole winter. Mr. Canning, then Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs, came to Paris on a visit, and, as is usual on
such occasions, diplomacy was a good deal mixed up with eating and
drinking. Report says, that the etiquette of the court was a good deal
deranged by this visit, the Bourbons not having adopted the hale-fellow
hospitality of the English kings. M. de Villele or M. de Damas would be
invited to dine at Windsor almost as a matter of course; but the
descendant of Hugh Capet hesitated about breaking bread with an English
commoner. The matter is understood to have been gotten over, by giving
the entertainment at St. Cloud, where, it would seem, the royal person
has fewer immunities than at the Tuileries. But, among other attentions
that were bestowed on the English statesman, Mr. Brown determined to
give him a great diplomatic dinner; and our own legations having a great
poverty of subordinates, except in the way of travelling _attaches_, I
was invited to occupy one end of the table, while the regular secretary
took his seat at the other. Before I attempt a short description of this
entertainment, it may help to enliven the solitude of your mountain
residence, and serve to give you more distinct ideas of the matter than
can be obtained from novels, if I commence with a summary of the
appliances and modes of polite intercourse in this part of the world, as
they are to be distinguished from our own.

In the first place, you are to discard from your mind all images of two
rooms and folding-doors, with a passage six feet wide, a narrow carpeted
flight of steps, and a bed-room prepared for the ladies to uncloak in,
and another in which the men can brush their hair and hide their hats.
Some such snuggeries very possibly exist in England, among the middling
classes; but I believe all over the continent of Europe style is never
attempted without more suitable means to carry out the intention.

In Paris, every one who mingles with the world lives in an hotel, or a
house that has a court and an outer gate. Usually the building surrounds
three sides of this court, and sometimes the whole four; though small
hotels are to be found, in which the court is