“Something wonderful and admirable it was,” she writes, “to see how these dukes and duchesses, marshals and marquises, chevaliers and bishops bore up under their unparalleled reverses! How they laughed, and talked, and squabbled, and flirted, constant to their high heels, their rouge and their furbelows, to their old _liésons_, their polished sarcasms and their cherished rivalries! They clung even to their _mariages de convenance_; and the very habits which would most have offended our English notions, if we had seen them in their splendid hotels of the Faubourg St. Germain, won tolerance and pardon when mixed up with such unaffected constancy and such cheerful resignation.” There were supper parties also given to other members of the French society by a cousin of Mary Mitford’s who had married an _émigré_ of high birth and who resided in Brunswick Square. Mary often spent the interval between Saturday afternoon and Monday morning with these relatives. “Saturday was their regular French day,” she writes, “when in the evening the conversation, music, games, manners and cookery were studiously and decidedly French. Trictrac superseded chess or backgammon, reversi took the place of whist, Gretry of Mozart, Racine of Shakespeare; omelettes and salads, champagne moussu, and _eau sucré_ excluded sandwiches, oysters and porter. “At these suppers their little school-girl visitor,” she says, “assisted, though at first rather in the French than the English sense of the word. I was present indeed, but had as little to do as possible either with speaking or eating.... However, in less than three months I became an efficient consumer of good things, and said ‘oui, monsieur,’ and ‘merci, madame,’ as often as a little girl of twelve years old ought to say anything. “I confess, however, that it took more time to reconcile me to the party round the table than to the viands with which it was covered. In truth they formed a motley group, reminding me now of a masquerade and then of a puppet show. I shall attempt to sketch a few of them as they then appeared to me, beginning, as etiquette demands, with the duchess.