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

[123] Nodier, who is its librarian. It took us nearly an hour to drive there, and another to return, and yet in the time of Henry IV., and even in the time of Louis XIII., that was the fashionable part of the city; so much is everything changed in Paris. The bad part of the matter, however, was that we did not see Nodier. Circourt had warned me beforehand, that when his daughter and her husband chance to go out, Nodier, who is a whimsical old fellow, not being able to make up his party of whist with his wife alone, goes to bed and takes to his bibliographical studies. Unluckily, as we entered his grim old residence, at nine o'clock, we met his daughter in a ball-dress just coming out for a party in the gay quarter of the city from which we were just arrived; and instantly afterward received Mad. Nodier's melancholy exclamation that her husband was in bed. Nothing remained but to sit down and be agreeable to Mad. Nodier for nearly an hour, which we did faithfully. Luckily, she is an agreeable person herself, so that we were not so badly off as we might have been. The best of the matter was the drive of two hours with Circourt, who, at my request, related to me in great detail, and with picturesque effect, what he knew of the outbreak of the Revolution of July, 1830, when he was the confidential Secretary of Foreign Affairs for Prince Polignac.