(a reconciliation all
philosophical, my friends) with his wife nee Higg of Manchester,
who adores titles like all Anglaises, and has recently made a great
succession, everybody allows that the measure was dictated by prudence,
and there is no more laughter at his change of name. The Princess takes
the first floor of the hotel at the price paid for it by the American
General, who has returned to his original pigs at Cincinnati. Had not
Cincinnatus himself pigs on his farm, and was he not a general and
member of Congress too? The honest Princess has a bedchamber, which, to
her terror, she is obliged to open of reception-evenings, when gentlemen
and ladies play cards there. It is fitted up in the style of Louis XVI.
In her bed is an immense looking-glass, surmounted by stucco cupids:
it is an alcove which some powdered Venus, before the Revolution, might
have reposed in. Opposite that looking-glass, between the tall windows,
at some forty feet distance, is another huge mirror, so that when the
poor Princess is in bed, in her prim old curl-papers, she sees a vista
of elderly princesses twinkling away into the dark perspective; and
is so frightened that she and Betsy, her Lancashire maid, pin up the
jonquil silk curtains over the bed-mirror after the first night; though
the Princess never can get it out of her head that her image is still
there, behind the jonquil hangings, turning as she turns, waking as she
wakes, etc. The chamber is so vast and lonely that she has a bed made
for Betsy in the room. It is, of course, whisked away into a closet on
reception-evenings. A boudoir, rose-tendre, with more cupids and nymphs
by Boucher, sporting over door-panels--nymphs who may well shock old
Betsy and her old mistress--is the Pricess's morning-room. "Ah, mum,
what would Mr. Humper at Manchester, Mr. Jowls of Newcome" (the minister
whom, in early days, Miss Higg used to sit under) "say if they was
browt into this room?" But there is no question of Jowls and Mr. Humper,
excellent dissenting divines, who preached to Miss Higg, being brought
into the Princesse de Moncontour's boudoir.

That paragraph, respecting a conversion in high life, which F. B. in his
enthusiasm inserted in the Pall Mall Gazette, caused no small excitement
in the Florac family. The Florac family read the Pall Mall Gazette,
knowing that Clive's friends were engaged in that periodical. When
Madame de Florac, who did not often read newspapers, happened to cast
her