MY DEAR SIR, I have just received your last letter, and as you complain, that I am not sufficiently minute in my descriptions of private society, I will endeavour to satisfy your curiosity, by giving a faithful account of an assembly, or _thé_, as it is called here, to which I was invited a few evenings since. The lady, at whose house this entertainment was given, belonged to the old court; but having remained in France during the whole of the revolution, has preserved her property. I drove to her hotel, about eight in the evening, and after passing through a dark and dirty antichamber, in which her servants and those of her guests sat very quietly, while I passed, without moving from their seats, I found my way, not without difficulty, into the “_salon_,” or drawing room: In this apartment, the walls of which bore the faint semblance of having been painted white, some thirty years before, and on which shattered remnants of tarnished gold might still be discovered, I perceived near the fire, the lady of the mansion. She half rose from her seat, as I approached, and after a short “bon jour monsieur,” continued in a whisper, an earnest conversation, in which she was engaged with an old gentleman, who, as I have since learnt, was a _ci-devant duke_, lately returned from emigration. As I was left entirely to myself, (for I was introduced to no one) I had ample time to examine every thing around me. The room, sombre in itself, was rendered still more so, by a patent lamp suspended in the middle, which was the only light I perceived, and which simply answered the purpose of making “darkness visible.”