the fashion to call the _petit hotel_.

Our first apartments were in one of these _petits hotels_, which had
once belonged to the family of Montmorency.[16] The great hotel, which
joined it, was inhabited, and I believe owned, by an American, who had
reversed the usual order of things by coming to Europe to seek his
fortune. Our next abode was the Hotel Jumilliac, in a small garden of a
remote part of the Faubourg St. Germain. This was a hotel of the smaller
size, and our apartments were chiefly on the second floor, or in what is
called the third story in America, where we had six rooms besides the
offices. Our saloon, dining-room, &c. had formerly been the bed-chamber,
dressing-room, and ante-chamber of Madame la Marquise, and gave one a
very respectful opinion of the state of a woman of quality, of a
secondary class, though I believe that this family too was highly
allied. From the Rue St. Maur, we went into a small country-house on the
bank of the Seine, about a league from the gates of Paris, which, a
century since, was inhabited by a Prince de Soubise, as _grand veneur_
of Louis XV, who used to go there occasionally, and eat his dinner, in
a very good apartment, that served us for a drawing-room. Here we were
well lodged, having some two or three-and-twenty well-furnished rooms,
offices included. From this place we went into the Rue des
Champs-Elysees, where we had a few rooms in a hotel of some size. Oddly
enough, our predecessor in a portion of these rooms was the Prince
Polignac, and our successor Marshal Marmont, two men who are now
proscribed in France. We have been in one or two apartments in nameless
edifices since our return from Germany, and we are now in a small hotel
in the Rue St. Dominique, where in some respects we are better lodged
than ever, though compelled to occupy three floors. Here the salon is
near thirty feet in length, and seventeen high. It is panelled in wood,
and above all the doors, of which, real and false, there are six, are
allegories painted on canvass, and enclosed in wrought gilded frames.
Four large mirrors are fixtures, and the windows are vast and descend to
the floor. The dining-room, which opens on a garden, is of the same
size, but even loftier. This hotel formerly had much interior gilding,
but it has chiefly been painted over. It was built by the physician of
the Duc d'Orleans, who married Madame de Montesson, and from this fact
you may form some idea of the style maintained