All at once, and without the least transition, the talk turned on Lord Stewart and on some mishaps due to his overweening conceit. ‘For the last four days,’ said some one, ‘his lordship has not been seen on foot or in his magnificent carriage. According to rumour, his face has been more or less damaged. He had a quarrel on the Danube bridge with a couple of hackney drivers, and immediately jumping off his seat, his excellency, waving his arms like the sails of a windmill, challenged his adversaries to an English boxing match. The Vienna coachman, however, knows nothing, either theoretically or practically of “fisticuffs,” and consequently our two Automédons’ [the French equivalent for our ‘Jehu,’ and an allusion to Achilles’ charioteer] ‘bravely grasped their whips, and first with the thongs and afterwards with the handles, belaboured his lordship with blows, without the least respect for his “pretty” face. They left him lying on the ground, bruised all over, and disappeared as quickly as their horses would take them. ‘Milord has bad luck, but his conceit seems incorrigible. Lately, on leaving the theatre, he happened to be behind the daughter of the Comtesse Co---- on the grand staircase. There was a great crush, and, taking advantage of it, his lordship was guilty of an act of impudent familiarity, which he might have found to his cost could only be washed out with blood. Without being in the least disconcerted, the young, handsome, and innocent girl quietly turned round and gave him a sound box on the ears, as a warning to leave innocence and beauty alone. Naturally, his lordship has been the laughing-stock of everybody, as he often is, for nothing waits so surely upon conceit and fatuous vanity as derision.’ ‘Have the Genoese envoys obtained an audience at last?’ asked some one, ‘Or have they been driven away from all the diplomatic doors at which they knocked for a hearing.’ ‘They ought to be well pleased,’ was the answer. ‘Weaned with their applications, M. de Metternich has given them the desired interview and overwhelmed them with his politeness. They wish to constitute themselves into an independent State. The minister listened to every word they said, and when they left off speaking, told them that Genoa would be incorporated with Piedmont. Our Genoese objected violently. M. de Metternich told them that the affair was settled, irrevocably settled, and bowed them out even more politely than he “bowed them in.” He might have saved them their breath.’ ‘The Duchesse de ----, not to be behindhand with the Princesse de ----, who has made her lover an ambassador, has made hers a general, though he has never seen a battle. It’s of no consequence, seeing that the Congress, in virtue of its wisdom, is to put an end to all war both in the immediate and distant future.’