Countess Lipona was much beloved and respected at Florence, and had a great liking and admiration for Félicie de Fauveau, in spite of their political antagonism, and it was owing to the last-mentioned friend that I had the privilege and delight of making her acquaintance. I always approached her as a royal personage, remembering what she had been, and made what I considered a conscientious compromise by using the title of _altesse_. On one occasion, at a masquerade, where I personated a “Marchande de Cœurs,” and carried a basket full of hearts, dramatic, poetical, diplomatic, and the like, I constructed a gigantic golden heart inscribed “Cœur de Caroline,” on which I paid an honest tribute to the extraordinary courage and equanimity with which she had borne the vicissitudes of a cruel destiny. This golden heart had no price; it was to be given up to the august Caroline for the value of a single smile, and kneeling at the feet of the Princess I so much admired, I presented her there and then with the greatest treasure in my basket. I can remember her appearance well; she was dressed in a domino of light green silk, trimmed with costly lace, green and white, the colours of the Legitimist party, and she laughingly called on Félicie de Fauveau to account for her selection of that combination. Now, Félicie was a genuine woman, and was never at a loss for an answer, and this was her gracious and loyal reply: “Madame,” she said, “c’est pour nous les faire aimer de toutes les manières.” How well I recall that night. Some of the English and Scotch guests arranged to dance a reel, and I had the good fortune to perform my part immediately before the spot where Countess Lipona was sitting. At the termination of the dance, she beckoned to me, and, with a kind kiss, presented me with her fan, “as a reward,” she said, “for the manner in which I had danced the _écossaise_.” It may well be imagined how dearly I cherish this relic of bygone days, and even more so the small bracelet of hair which she sent me the ensuing year by my cousin, Lady Clinton, who was travelling in Italy shortly after her second marriage with Sir Horace Seymour. By the way, the coupling of these two names, I was assured, caused some animadversions among the society of a city where you would not have expected the inhabitants to be extra strait-laced. But our peculiar English custom of widows retaining the rank of the first husband, if superior to that of the second, is very perplexing to the mind of a foreigner, as in other European countries the wife is naturally expected to bear the name of the suitor whom she accepts.