From the Place de la Madeleine I drove to a house near the Carrousel, where I had been invited to 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 Premier President;[18] 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. We are now at the door, and I have rung. On whom do you imagine the curtain will rise? On a _réunion_ of philosophers some 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 was crowded; chiefly with men. Two card-tables were set, and at one I recognised a party, in which were 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 the whole, it savoured strongly of Coblentz and the _émigration_. This was more truly French than anything I had yet stumbled on. One or two of the grandees looked at me as if, better informed than Scott, they knew that General La Fayette had not gone to America to live. Some of these gentlemen certainly do not love us; but I had cut out too much work for the night to stay and return the big looks of even dukes, and, watching an opportunity when the eyes of Madame de ---- were another way, I stole out of the room.