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

At last he rose, and, showing me to the door by which I had entered, said, ‘If you will go to my wife in the saloon I will join you in a moment.’ I passed through the rich and beautiful library, containing, I understand, twenty or thirty thousand volumes, but of which, by the by, not a syllable had been said in the conversation, though I had been invited expressly to come and visit it. I passed, too, through the first vast antechamber, which was empty, and through the second, where the dinner-table was waiting. After this began a suite of very richly furnished rooms, through which I advanced until their number had become so considerable that I began to think I had made some mistake; but a servant, seeing me hesitate, came to me and showed me through two or three more, until I came to the saloon where the Princess was sitting, with three old ladies and two gentlemen, one of whom I had seen before. It was a splendid room, most magnificently furnished, and so large that five ormoulu chandeliers of great size and beauty were suspended from its ceiling. I have seen few saloons in palaces so rich, and still fewer in such good taste.

As soon as I entered it, ‘Well,’ said the Princess, ‘I hope you have had an agreeable conference with my husband, for it has been a long one.’ ‘So long,’ said one of the old ladies,—who was also a princess, but I know not from where,—‘so long that it has made me very hungry.’ They all laughed heartily, and we had some lively talk for a few moments, till the Premier came in, and, apologizing slightly for his tardiness, took the hungry old Princess and led the way to dinner.

The Princess Metternich took my arm, and after a journey through the suite of apartments where I had nearly lost myself just before, we reached the dinner-table, which was round and had eight covers, and the same number of attendants, only one or two of whom were in livery. The dinner was as delicious, I suppose, as the science of cookery could make it, and extended through from ten to fourteen courses, with many kinds of wines, and among the rest Tokay; but nothing could be easier or more degage than the tone at table. At first, the conversation was mere commonplace gossip. We had good Johannisberg, of course, and the Princess made some jokes about her selling it to the Americans, to which the Prince added, that he had an agent in New York for the purpose, and that we could buy there as good wine as he gives to his friends in Vienna.

In the midst of this, a secretary came in and delivered a despatch, that moment received, he said, by express from Paris. The news of