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

[129] recover it, Mad. Tastu has for some years supported her family by her pen. Her poems, in three volumes, are the best of her works, and indeed she has not published much else. These are very good of their sort, and sometimes remind me, as she herself does, both in her fortunes and her character, of Mrs. Hemans. She talked well this afternoon, and her French, both in accent and in phraseology, was particularly beautiful. Her appearance denotes feeble health, and I am told that she works too hard, writing much for the periodicals to earn a subsistence . . . . January 30.—. . . . The beginning of the evening I spent at Thierry's. There was no company, and I had a great deal of pleasant talk with him about his occupations, and his projected history of the Merovingians; a prodigious work for one broken down with such calamities as he is.¹ Afterwards I went to Guizot's, and found a plenty of deputies, the Greek Ambassador, in his costume, and the Baron de Barante, with his beautiful wife, now spending the winter in Paris, on leave of absence from St. Petersburg, where he is French Ambassador.² He is much altered since I knew him before; but still looks well, and talks as becomes the author of the ‘History of the Dukes of Burgundy.’ As I arrived late, only a portion of the evening's party remained, and I was glad of it; for Guizot's rooms are small, and his friends numerous. January 31.—. . . . I dined to-day at the Duke de Broglie's; a dinner made in honor of the Baron de Barante, and the Count de Ste. Aulaire, French Ambassadors at St. Petersburg and Vienna, now here on leave of absence. It was, of course, a little ceremonious, and a good many of the principal Doctrinaires, Guizot, Duchatel, etc., were there. Barante, however, was missing, and was waited for half an hour; and when we sat down at table it was plain that it was a political dinner; for, except Eynard of Geneva and myself, every individual was of political note. The whole conversation, too, was in the same tone, and was curious, since it turned, for some time, on the character and prospects of Thiers, whom, I must needs say, they treated with great generosity. Ste. Aulaire has all the acuteness and esprit he used to have; but he is grown very old, and looks, more than anybody else I have seen here, like a genuine Frenchman of the ancien regime, his hair powdered, and his physiognomy belonging