I have become acquainted too with a very pleasant family, M. and Mme Vanderberg, who are the proprietors of a large house and magnificent garden in the Faubourg du Roule. M. Vanderberg is a man of very large fortune.[62] He has three daughters, handsome and highly accomplished, and one son; one of them was married to General R----, but is since divorced; the second is married to a young colonel of Hussars, and the third is still unmarried; but being very young, handsome, accomplished and rich, there will be no lack of suitors whenever she is disposed to accept the connubial chain. I have dined several times with this family. There is an excellent table. The choicest old wines are handed about during dinner, and afterwards we adjourn to another room to take coffee and liqueurs. If there is no evening party, the company retire, some for the theatre, some for other houses, where they have to pass the evening; if the family remain at home you have the option of retiring or remaining with them, and the evening is filled up with music or _petits jeux_. I meet with several agreeable and distinguished people at this house, among whom are M. Anglas, Mme Duthon from the Canton de Vaud, a lady of great vivacity and talent, and General Guilleminot and his lady. Col. Paulet, who married M. Vanderberg's second daughter, was on the staff of General Guilleminot at the battle of Waterloo and suffered much from a fever and ague that he caught on the night bivouacs. I have attended a séance of the Institution of the _Sourds-Muets_ founded by the famous Abbé de l'Epée, and continued with equal success by his successor the Abbé S[icard],[63] who delivered the lecture and exhibited the talent and proficiency of his pupils. The eldest pupil, Massieu, himself deaf and dumb, is an extraordinary genius and he may be said in some measure to direct all the others. Massieu, who has a very interesting and even handsome countenance, and manners extremely prepossessing, conducts the examination of the pupils by means of signs, and writing on a slate or paper; and it is wonderful to observe the progress made by these interesting young persons, who have been so harshly treated by Nature. The definitions they give of substances and qualities are so just and happy; and in their situation, definition is everything, for they cannot learn by rote, as other boys often do, who, in the study of philology, acquire only words and not things or meanings. The deaf and dumb persons, on the contrary, acquire at once by this method of instruction the philosophy of grammar; and then it is far from being the dry study that many people suppose. A German princess who was present exclaimed in a transport of admiration at some of the specimens of definitions and inferences given by the pupils; " Oh! I wish that I were born deaf and dumb, were it only to learn grammar properly!" Sir Sidney Smith was present at this lecture and seemed inclined to make himself a little too conspicuous.