_August 2d._--Another beautiful day. More regiments marching towards Normandy. In consequence of the return of our nuns, we moved our mess establishment to-day into the Petit chateau, having prepared and made as comfortable as circumstances would admit the grand _salon_ in the centre of the front. This is a very fine room with a boarded floor in little squares (_parquet_), which looks very well, but is very creaky, as all these floors are. We collected what chairs were still serviceable as seats, and as they were few, the wheeler patched up others; a table was a more difficult article to procure; the floor served as a sideboard. There being no glass in the window, we are obliged to make the venetians (which fortunately are unbroken) answer, lowering those to windward when the air is too much. We are raised about six feet above the lawn, and two winding flights of steps afford the means of descending from the windows of the bowed front to the turf below. Fatigue-parties have been employed all yesterday and this morning clearing the lawn of the fragments of furniture, rags of curtains, torn books, and broken glass, that encumbered and disfigured it--so that now our domain looks decent, and we have actually wondered we could stay so long in the gloomy old house we have left. By way of a house-warming I gave my champagne on promotion, and we have had a merry evening, without excess, or I should not be able to write this. _3d._--No headache this morning; our champagne was excellent and very cheap. In England we should pay from 10s. to 15s. per bottle. This cost me precisely 5 francs, or 4s. 2d., a bottle--some little difference. But to my journal. Rode to Paris, and as usual put up Cossack at a stable I have discovered in Rue de Malle, just by the Place du Carrousel, consequently very convenient. When I arrived, there were several people in the stable, who gathered round me and Cossack, asking with apparent curiosity if he was in the battle of Mont St Jean. I told them Yes, and all about his eight wounds--the scars of which were visible enough. This seemed to excite great interest; and I walked off, leaving them assembled round the fellow’s stall, having first, however, warned them of his heels. The Palais Royal, Rue Vivienne, and Boulevard were the scenes of my promenade. The first I have spoken of before, and hope to do so again; the second is a kind of Bond Street, leading straight away from the northern entrance of the Palais Royal. Like Bond Street, it is narrow--so narrow, indeed, that the London street becomes broad by comparison, and is infinitely its superior in the convenient _trottoir_ which the Rue Vivienne totally wants. In short, in London this narrow, badly-paved avenue, with its gutter down the centre, would only rank as a lane. Here is to be seen all the beauty and fashion of Paris; for here, as in Bond Street, are all the fashionable shops. If some of those under the arcades of