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

[104] look so much; is still pretty; and has that charm she always had, of perfectly simple and even naive manners, added to great frankness and talent. Her daughter, the Viscountess d'haussonville, was there, and is beautiful; . . . . and a M. Doudan, who is a sort of secretary to the Duke, and who has the reputation of beaucoup de moyens. We talked chiefly about old times, and the changes that years have brought,—the death of their beautiful daughter Pauline, and of Miss Randall; the death of Auguste de Stael, etc.,—till Villemain came in, who has grown quite stout, with his added reputation, and then I came away, promising to dine with them to-morrow, and meet Guizot, who is expected in town on business to-night. I asked the Duke about Confalonieri's case; and he said he was as much in the dark about it as everybody else, and extremely sorry not to find him in Paris. . . .

October 6.—I dined at the de Broglies', and went an hour before dinner, because Mad. de Broglie said she wanted me to come so early that we might have some quiet talk before company should come in. She was very interesting; told me much of her life and of her family during the last twenty years, and talked largely of her religious opinions, which are Calvinistic, knowing mine to be Unitarian. Of her children, and of her husband and his public career, she spoke with all her natural frankness; and about America and our institutions she was curious, but is evidently less democratically inclined than when I knew her before. Her conversation was always earnest, sometimes brilliant, and I was sorry when the approach of dinner interrupted it. Her pretty, or rather beautiful daughter came first, with her husband; then M. Doudan and then Alphonse de Rocca, the youngest son of Mad. de Stael, now about twenty-five, extremely ugly in the lower part of his face, like his mother,— very good-natured, it is said, but with a moderate capacity.

The Duke de Broglie came last, with Guizot, who, having had his hints beforehand, pretended to remember a great deal more about me than my vanity could render credible.¹ He talked at first, with much French esprit, upon a recent article of Montalembert on the Revival of the Arts, upon an Edinburgh review on Bacon attributed to Macaulay, and such matters.

I thought, in all this, there was something got up for effect, a little more of the fashionable air of the salon than became his character and position. But all Frenchmen—or almost all—desire this reputation for esprit, and are not insensible to the succes de salon; and