The official balls at the Elysee, of which two or three are usually given every winter, are very informal in character. The American traveler who wishes to attend must send in his or her name through the medium of the American minister. The invitation-lists are divided into as many sections as there are balls to be given, so as to avoid over-crowding in the comparatively small salons of the Elysee. Madame MacMahon and the marshal receive their guests in a small reception-room, which is the first of the suite of apartments on the first floor, all of which are thrown open to the public on such occasions. They receive in a perfectly simple and informal manner. Each guest on entering bows to the host and hostess without any form of presentation, and is then at liberty to wander about at will. The apartments thrown open comprise the state suites on the first and second floors, numbering some twenty or thirty rooms in all. A temporary gallery is erected to serve as a supper-room, and there refreshments are served all through the evening, there being no set hour for supper, as with us. The profusion of flowers and lights, the crowd of powdered footmen in the white and scarlet liveries of the marshal, the delightful music and splendid toilettes, combine to make these balls very elegant and attractive, though far less so than were the official fetes given under the Empire, when the superb apartments of the Hotel de Ville and of the Tuileries formed the grand ball-rooms for the hospitalities of the government. The Elysee is much too small to accommodate the crowds that usually rush to these festivals. The heat and crush are excessive, and it is recorded that after the great ball last year wisps of costly laces, shreds of Chantilly, rags of old point, scraps of point de Bruxelles strewed the grand staircase from top to bottom. The crowd, owing to the division of the invitation-lists of which I have spoken, is less dense this year, but still great enough to render a ball at the Elysee anything but a comfortable form of enjoyment. There is one feature about Parisian entertainments, whether public or private, which is apt to strike a stranger very unpleasantly; and that is the card-playing--nay, to put it accurately, the actual gambling--which forms one of the amusements of the evening. It is not pleasant to behold in the salons of the President of the French Republic an accurate reproduction in miniature of the departed glories of Baden-Baden and of Homburg--the shaded lamps, throwing a lurid light on the "board of green cloth," the piles of gold, the shifting cards, the intent faces of the players, and the groups of gazers looking on in silence. Vast sums are, I am told, often lost and won in this manner during a single evening. This, at least, is a reproach from which American entertainments of the highest class are certainly free. John Morrisey may take his seat in Congress, but he does not direct the amusements in the back parlor of the White House.