Auber bid me good-by, saying, "Au revoir until Paris, if you are not too absorbed in these grandeurs to receive a poor, insignificant bourgeois like me." "You can always try," I answered with a laugh. "Bon soir et bon voyage!" _December 2d._ What a day this has been! A storm of rain and hail raged all night, and when I looked out of the window this morning I saw everything deluged in water. The park looked dismal; all the paths were full of puddles; the trees were dripping with rain, and, to judge from the dark skies and threatening clouds, it seemed as if worse was to follow and there might be thunder and lightning. On the programme for to-day there stood _chasse à courre_; but of course _cela tombait dans l'eau_, as would have been its natural end anyway in this weather. None of the ladies donned their green costumes, as even one was so sure that the day would be passed indoors. At _déjeuner_ I was fortunate enough to sit between Prince Metternich and the Marquis de Gallifet. Certainly I could not have two more delightful companions, each so different and yet so entertaining. The Marquis was very aggressive and grumpy; but very amusing. In French one says, "On a le vin triste," or "On a le vin gai." The Marquis has "le déjeuner grincheux (grumpy)," I think. He began by attacking me on the English language. He said it was utterly absurd and illogical, and though he ought to know it, as he had an English wife, he felt he never could learn it. "Apropos of to-day's weather, you say, 'It never rains but it pours'--au fond qu'est-ce que cela veut dire? 'Il ne pleut jamais, mais il pleut à verse'; cela n'a pas le sens commun--you might as well say, 'It never pours but it rains.'" I had to confess that it did sound senseless, and tried to explain the meaning; but he grumbled, "Why don't they say what they mean?" He told me he was once traveling in England and put his head out of the carriage window to see something, and some one inside cried, "Look out!" He put his head still farther out, when the person continued to scream, "Look out!" He answered, "I am looking out," at which a rude hand seized him by the coat-collar and jerked him inside, saying, "Damn it, look in then!" "How can any one conquer a language as stupid as that?" I told him I felt humiliated to own such a language, and I ought to apologize for it, though I had not invented it and did not feel responsible for it; but he would not listen to me. Prince Metternich asked, "What shall we do indoors this awful day?" I proposed tableaux; but he objected to tableaux. Then I suggested that one might have a fancy-dress tea-party. At last, after many wild propositions, he said, "Why not charades?" Of course he had intended charades all the time. He asked the Marquis de Gallifet if he would help us. "No, I won't," answered the Marquis, "but you are welcome to my wife; she loves dressing-up and all that nonsense;" adding, "It is the only thing she can do with success."