step in, in the course of the evening. All
the buildings that remain within the intended parallelogram, which will
some day make this spot one of the finest squares in the world, have
been bought by the government, or nearly so, with the intent to have
them pulled down, at a proper time; and the court bestows lodgings, _ad
interim_, among them, on its favourites. Madame de ---- was one of these
favoured persons, and she occupies a small apartment in the third story
of one of these houses. The rooms were neat and well-arranged, but
small. Probably the largest does not exceed fifteen feet square. The
approach to a Paris lodging is usually either very good, or very bad. In
the new buildings may be found some of the mediocrity of the new order
of things; but in all those which were erected previously to the
revolution, there is nothing but extremes in this, as in most other
things: great luxury and elegance, or great meanness and discomfort. The
house of Madame de ---- happens to be of the latter class, and although
all the disagreeables have disappeared from her own rooms, one is
compelled to climb up to them, through a dark well of a staircase, by
flights of steps not much better than those we use in our stables. You
have no notion of such staircases as those I had just descended in the
hotels of the _chancelier_ and the _president premier_;[25] nor have we
any just idea, as connected with respectable dwellings, of these I had
now to clamber up. M. de ---- is a man of talents and great
respectability, and his wife is exceedingly clever, but they are not
rich. He is a professor, and she is an artist. After having passed so
much of my youth on top-gallant yards, and in becketting royals, you are
not to suppose, however, I had any great difficulty in getting up these
stairs, narrow, steep, and winding as they were.

[Footnote 25: M. de Marbois was the first president of the Court of
Accounts.]

We are now at the door, and I have rung. On whom do you imagine the
curtain will rise? On a _reunion_ of philosophers come to discuss
questions in botany, with M. de ----, or on artists, assembled to talk
over the troubles of their profession, with his wife? The door opens,
and I enter.

The little drawing-room is crowded; chiefly with men. Two card-tables
are set, and at one I recognize a party, in which are three dukes of the
_vieille cour_, with M. de Duras at their head! The rest of the company
was a little more mixed, but, on