The other was the Austrian ambassadress, Countess Wolkenstein, whom I had slightly known, years before, as Countess Schleinitz, wife of the minister of the royal household at Berlin. On her afternoons one heard the best talk by the most interesting men; and it was at the salons of these two ladies that there took place the conversations which I have recorded in my "History of the Warfare of Science," showing the development of a legend regarding the miraculous cure of the Archbishop of St. Petersburg by Father Ivan of Cronstadt. Another place which especially attracted me was the house of General Ignatieff, formerly ambassador at Constantinople, where, on account of his alleged want of scruples in bringing on the war with Russia, he received the nickname "Mentir Pasha." His wife was the daughter of Koutousoff, the main Russian opponent of Napoleon in 1812; and her accounts of Russia in her earlier days and of her life in Constantinople were at times fascinating. I remember meeting at her house, on one occasion, the Princess Ourousoff, who told me that the Emperor Alexander had said to her, "I wish that every one could see Sardou's play 'Thermidor' and discover what revolution really is"; and that she had answered, "Revolutions are prepared long before they break out." That struck me as a very salutary bit of philosophy, which every Russian monarch would do well to ponder. The young Princess Radzivill was also especially attractive. In one of her rooms hung a portrait of Balzac, taken just after death, and it was most striking. This led her to give me very interesting accounts of her aunt, Madame de Hanska, to whom Balzac wrote his famous letters, and whom he finally married. I met at her house another lady of high degree, to whom my original introduction had been somewhat curious. Dropping in one afternoon at the house of Henry Howard, the British first secretary, I met in the crowd a large lady, simply dressed, whom I had never seen before. Being presented to her, and not happening to catch her name, I still talked on, and found that she had traveled, first in Australia, then in California, thence across our continent to New York; and her accounts of what she had seen interested me greatly. But some little time afterward I met her again at the house of Princess Radzivill, and then found that she was the English Duchess of Buckingham. One day I had been talking with the Princess and her guest on the treasures of the Imperial Library, and especially the wonderful collection of autographs, among them the copy-book of Louis XIV when a child, which showed the pains taken to make him understand, even in his boyhood, that he was an irresponsible autocrat. On one of its pages the line to be copied ran as follows: L'hommage est du aux Roys, ils font ce qu'il leur plaist.--LOUIS.