The next day came another Englishman of about fifty, who distinguished himself in another way. He did not know a duchess, or, if he did, we were not informed of his good fortune; but he assumed a wonderful air of superiority to his temporary surroundings, that filled me, I must say, with the deepest respect and awe. The impression he desired to produce was that he had never before been in so poor a little place, and that our society was far beneath what he was accustomed to. He criticised things disdainfully, and when I ventured to speak to him he condescended, it is true, to enter into conversation, but in a manner that seemed to say, "Who and what are you that you dare to speak to a gentleman like me, who am, as you must perceive, a person of wealth and consideration?" This account of our English visitors is certainly not exaggerated by any excessive sensitiveness on my part. Paris is not the Desert; and one who has known it for thirty years is not dependent for society on a chance arrival from beyond the sea. For me these Englishmen were but actors in a play, and perhaps they afforded me more amusement with their own peculiar manners than if they had been pleasant and amiable. One result, however, was inevitable. I had been full of kindly feeling towards my fellow-countrymen when they came, but this soon gave place to indifference; and their departure was rather a relief. When they had left Paris, there arrived a rich French widow from the south with her son and a priest, who seemed to be tutor and chaplain. The three lived at our _table d'hôte_; and we found them most agreeable, always ready to take their share in conversation, and, although far too well-bred to commit the slightest infraction of the best French social usages, either through ignorance or carelessness, they were at the same time perfectly open and easy in their manners. They set up no pretensions, they gave themselves no airs, and when they returned to their own southern sunshine we felt their departure as a loss. The foreign idea of social intercourse under such conditions (that is, of intercourse between strangers who are thrown together accidentally) is simply that it is better to pass an hour agreeably than in dreary isolation. People may not have much to say that is of any profound interest, but they enjoy the free play of the mind; and it sometimes happens, in touching on all sorts of subjects, that unexpected lights are thrown upon them. Some of the most interesting conversations I have ever heard have taken place at foreign _tables d'hôte_, between people who had probably never met before and who would separate forever in a week. If by accident they meet again, such acquaintances recognize each other by a bow, but there is none of that intrusiveness which the Englishman so greatly dreads.