And now we come to a later period, and Mme Sophie Gay shall give place to her lively and clever daughter Delphine, Mme Emile Girardin. 'Parisian society,' she writes, 'now, in 1839, offers the strangest aspect that ever was seen--a mixture of luxury and rudeness, English propriety and French negligence, political absurdities and revolutionary terrors, of which it is hard to form a just conception. The luxury of the salons is truly Eastern, not only the salons, indeed, but the anterooms: an anteroom in a handsome hotel is more richly adorned than the most beautiful drawing-room of the provincial prefecture. There, footmen more or less powdered--for there are rebels who choose to wear so little powder, that you would rather take them for millers, in livery, than for servants of the anteroom--these self-styled powdered lackeys offer you a great book, bound in velvet, with the corners bronzed and gilt, in which you are asked to write your name. If the lady of the house is visible, you are pompously ushered into the sanctuary--that is to say, into the second salon or parlour, or closet, or _atelier_, whichever best assorts with the pretensions of the lady. A dog darts upon you, barks, makes a show of biting you; he is quieted, submits, and regains his purple cushion, growling. Dogs are very much in fashion: together with the fire, flowers, an old aunt, and two toadies, they make up part of the living accompaniments of a genteel salon. As you are an elegant person, of course you are ill-dressed: your coat is dusty, your boots speckled with mud, your hair uncombed, you exhale a strong odour of tobacco. At first glance, such things seem rather disagreeable, common, and inelegant. No such thing: this is exactly the most fashionable style we have; it seems to say: "I have just dismounted from the finest horse in Paris. I am a man of fashion, of that distinguished position in society, that I can go in a morning to call on a duchess, _dressed like a highwayman_."