door to me was the one whom it was impossible to mistake, hearing what is reported--six feet high, a magnificent head of black hair, pale complexion, mustachios which reach from _here to London_. Such is _the stork_. But, of course, I only appeared to take him for an under-servant. The Princess immediately took me aside and told me all that was true, and a great deal that was not.... Her Royal Highness said that Gell and Craven had behaved very ill to her, and I am tempted to believe that they did not behave well; but then how did she behave towards them?... It made me tremble to think what anger would induce a woman to do, when she abused three of her best friends for their cavalier manner of treating her.... “Well, when I left Naples, you see, my dear,” continued the Princess, “those gentlemen refused to go with me, unless I returned immediately to England. They supposed I should be so miserable without them that I would do anything they desired me, and when they found I was too glad to _get rid of ’em_ (as she called it) they wrote the most humble letters, and thought I would take them back again, whereas they were very much mistaken. I had _got rid of them_, and I would remain so.”’ The Princess appears to have corresponded with Murat. The soldier-king is said to have addressed to her a very flattering note, beginning ‘Madame, ma chere, chere sœur,’ as if she had already been a queen, and that he were treating with her on a footing of equality. Her reply is described as clever but flippant, beneath her dignity, and so wild and strange as to be entitled to be considered one of the most extraordinary specimens of royal letter-writing that had ever been seen.