y and _salons_.

In the slate drawing-rooms a fanciful notion of the Count's was carried
into effect and was greatly admired, though, I believe, owing to the
great expense, the mode was not adopted in other houses, namely, on the
folding-doors of the suite being thrown open to admit company, certain
pedals connected with them were put in motion, and a strain of music
was produced, which announced the presence of guests, and the doors of
each of the drawing-rooms when opened took up the air, and continued it
until closed.

Many of the old _noblesse_ have been describing the splendour of the
Hotel d'Orsay to me since I have been at Paris, and the Duc de
Talleyrand said it almost realised the notion of a fairy palace. Could
the owner who expended such vast sums on its decoration, behold it in
its present ruin, he could never recognise it; but such would be the
case with many a one whose stately palaces became the prey of a furious
rabble, let loose to pillage by a revolution--that most fearful of all
calamities, pestilence only excepted, that can befall a country.

General Ornano, his stepson Count Waleski, M. Achille La Marre, General
d'Orsay, and Mr. Francis Baring dined here yesterday. General Ornano is
agreeable and well-mannered. We had music in the evening, and the
lively and pretty Madame la H---- came. She is greatly admired, and no
wonder; for she is not only handsome, but clever and piquant. Hers does
not appear to be a well-assorted marriage, for M. la H---- is grave, if
not austere, in his manners, while she is full of gaiety and vivacity,
the demonstrations of which seem to give him any thing but pleasure.

I know not which is most to be pitied, a saturnine husband whose
gravity is only increased by the gaiety of his wife, or the gay wife
whose exuberance of spirits finds no sympathy in the Mentor-like
husband. Half, if not all, the unhappy marriages, accounted for by
incompatibility of humour, might with more correctness be attributed to
a total misunderstanding of each other's characters and dispositions in
the parties who drag a heavy and galling chain through life, the links
of which might be rendered light and easy to be borne, if the wearers
took but half the pains to comprehend each other's peculiarities that
they in general do to reproach or to resent the annoyance these
peculiarities occasion them.

An austere man would learn that the gaiety of his wife was as natural
and excusable a peculiarity