George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[355] and a breakfast at Mr. Ticknor's hotel. Puibusque, Ternaux-Compans, Mignet, came to find their former friend, and de Tocqueville came repeatedly, during a few days he was in town, and dined once with Mr. Ticknor. Ten days after his arrival in Paris the Count and Countess de Circourt returned, from a journey, to their pretty country-place at La Celle St. Cloud, and there Madame de Circourt, who was then a suffering invalid, received the Ticknors at a charming breakfast alfresco, on a lovely summer day. Count Circourt was constantly a delightful companion in town, breakfasting and dining in the Place Vendome, dropping in for interesting talk, and showing hearty sympathy when the bad news came from America.

M. Guizot invited Mr. Ticknor to Val Richer, where he went and had two most agreeable days; and he afterwards went for a day or two to Gurcy, the country-place of M. d'haussonville, where he once more saw the Due de Broglie.

In a letter to Count Circourt, written a few years later, after the death of Mad. de Circourt, and immediately on receiving news of the death of the Duchesse de Rauzan, Mr. Ticknor sketches his experience in his four visits to Paris:—

As you say truly, the traditions, even, of that old society which once made Paris so charming are already among the things of the past. Its last relics lie buried with Madame de Circourt and Madame de Rauzan. What I saw of it was in 1817, in the salon of the dying Madame de Stael, in that of Madame de Chateaubriand and Madame Constant; then, in 1818 and 1819, in the more brilliant salons of the Duchesse de Duras and the Duchesse de Broglie, and of the Comatesse de Ste. Aulaire, not forgetting the Saturday evenings at the palace, where the Duchesse de Duras received, with inimitable graciousness and dignity, on behalf of the King, as wife of the first Gentleman of the Bedchamber; and finally in the winter of 1837-38, which we had the pleasure of passing in Paris, when the Duchesse de Broglie and Madame de Rauzan shared with Madame de Circourt the inheritance they had received from their mothers, and Guizot and Thiers and Mole had salons with very little of the old feminine grace and gentleness in them.

But this was the last that I saw of what remained from the old French salons. When we were in Paris in 1857, the Duchesse de