but I doubt whether it was
anything else but a mask. Madame Delphine de Girardin, on the other
hand, was endowed with uncommon literary, poetical, and intellectual
gifts; but I have always considered it doubtful whether even the Nine
Muses, rolled into one, would be bearable for any length of time. As for
Victor Hugo, no man not blessed with an extraordinary bump of veneration
would have gone more than once to his soirees. The permanent
entertainment there consisted of a modern version of the "perpetual
adoration," and of nothing else, because, to judge by my few
experiences, his guests were never offered anything to eat or to drink.
As a set-off, the furniture and appointments of his apartments were more
artistic than those of most of his contemporaries; but Becky Sharp has
left it on record that "mouton aux navets," dished up in priceless china
and crested silver, is after all but "mouton aux navets," and at Hugo's
even that homely fare was wanting.

Among the few really good salons were those of the ambassadors of the
Two Sicilies, of England, and of Austria. The former two were in the
Faubourg Saint-Honore, the latter in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The
soirees of the Duc de Serra-Cabriola were very animated; there was a
great deal of dancing. I cannot say the same of those of Lord and Lady
Granville, albeit that both the host and hostess did the honours with
charming and truly patrician grace and hospitality. But the English
guests would not throw off their habitual reserve, and the French in the
end imitated the manner of the latter, in deference, probably, to Lord
and Lady Granville, who were not at all pleased at this sincerest form
of French flattery of their countrymen.

There was no such restraint at Count Apponyi's, in the Faubourg
Saint-Germain, the only house where the old French noblesse mustered in
force. The latter virtually felt themselves on their own ground, for the
host was known to have not much sympathy with parvenus, even titled
ones, though the titles had been gained on the battle-field. Had he not
during the preceding reign ruthlessly stripped Soult and Marmont, and
half a dozen other dukes of the first empire, by giving instructions to
his servants to announce them by their family names? Consequently,
flirtation a la Marivaux, courtly _galanterie_ a la Louis XV., sprightly
and witty conversation, "minuetting" a la Watteau, was the order of the
day as well as of the night there, for the dejeune