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

[114] his—Pichon's—fortune, and with whom, for the greater part of his life, he had been extremely intimate, hates the United States. He has never—Pichon thinks—forgotten Washington's refusal to receive him at his levee, because he did not think it suitable, in the delicate position of affairs with France, to receive an émigre in the presence of the French Minister. At any rate, since the 18th Brumaire, he had always expressed himself openly against the United States, and used his influence recently against granting our claims for the famous twenty-five millions.

Burr once said to Pichon, ‘The rule of my life is, to make business a pleasure, and pleasure my business.’

December 14.—. . . . In the latter part of the evening I went to a fashionable party at the Marquis Brignole's, the Sardinian Ambassador. Count Mole and several other of the ministers were there, most of the foreign diplomacy, and a good deal of the fashion of Paris. But this is the first party that has been given this season, and the whole force of the beau monde is, therefore, by no means collected. It was, like all such parties in the great capitals of the Continent, a collection of extremely well dressed people in beautiful and brilliantly lighted rooms. Among them I found a few old acquaintances, especially the Duke de Villareal, recently Prime Minister in Portugal, and son of the Souza who published the magnificent ‘Camoens.’ I knew him when he was Minister of Portugal at Madrid, and had much pleasant talk with him about old times. The Circourts were there, Count d'appony, Countess de Ste. Aulaire, and a good many persons whom I knew, so that I had an agreeable visit.

December 18.—I went, as usual on Mondays, to Fauriel's lecture on Spanish Literature; which, as usual, was much too minute on the antiquities that precede its appearance. In fact, now, after an introductory lecture and two others, he has not completed his view of the state of things in Spain at the first dawning of tradition, seven hundred years before Christ. At this rate, he will not, by the time we leave Paris next spring, have reached the Arabs. He lectures at the Sorbonne, whose ancient halls are now as harmless as they were once formidable, and has an audience thus far of about fifty or sixty persons, not more than half of whom are young men. He is very learned and acute, but too minute and elaborate.

In the evening I went to Mad. Martinetti's,¹ who is here for the winter. She is as winning as ever, and as full of knowledge and