social crusade against the adherents to the latter;
consequently the company was perhaps not always so select as it might
have been, and many amusing incidents and _piquantes_ adventures were
the result. He put a stop to these, however, when he discovered that his
hospitality was being abused, and that invitations given to strangers,
at the request of some of his familiars, had been paid for in kind, if
not in coin.

As a rule, though, the company was far less addicted to
scandal-mongering and causing scandal than similarly composed "sets"
during the subsequent reign. They were not averse to playing practical
jokes, especially upon those who made themselves somewhat too
conspicuous by their eccentricities. Lord Brougham, who was an assiduous
guest at the Hotel Castellane during his frequent visits to Paris, was
often selected as their victim. He, as it were, provoked the tricks
played upon him by his would-be Don-Juanesque behaviour, and by the many
opportunities he lost of holding his tongue--in French. He absolutely
murdered the language of Moliere. His worthy successor in that respect
was Lady Normanby, who, as some one said, "not only murdered the tongue,
but tortured it besides." The latter, however, never lost her dignity
amidst the most mirth-compelling blunders on her part, while the English
statesman was often very near enacting the buffoon, and was once almost
induced to accept a role in a vaudeville, in which his execrable French
would no doubt have been highly diverting to the audience, but would
scarcely have been in keeping with the position he occupied on the other
side of the Channel. "Quant a Lord Brougham," said a very witty
Frenchman, quoting Shakespeare in French, "il n'y a pour lui qu'un pas
entre le sublime et le ridicule. C'est le pas de Calais, et il le
traverse trop souvent."

In 1842, when the Comte Jules de Castellane married Mdlle. de
Villontroys, whose mother had married General Rapp and been divorced
from him, a certain change came over the spirit of the house; the
entertainments were as brilliant as ever, but the two rival manageresses
had to abdicate their sway, and the social status of the guests was
subjected to a severer test. The new dispensation did not ostracize the
purely artistic element, but, as the comtesse tersely put it,
"dorenavant, je ne recevrai que ceux qui ont de l'art ou des armoiries."
She strictly kept her word, even during the first years of the Second
Empire, when