Many merry days we spent among the trees and statues of those gardens, and often on a sunny morning we could see the old King, Louis Philippe, pacing the terrace fronting the river. He used generally to wear a long grey great-coat with a huge steeple hat covering the famous _Poire_[16]—an astute, none-too-reliable old man. He never had but one companion on his walks—probably General Baudrand, his most familiar friend—perhaps Guizot or some minister—talking earnestly, stopping every now and then to enforce a point with appropriate gesticulations. Hatching plots, Spanish marriage for Montpensier, or some other villainy? Probably. But that old grey coat covered a King, and we looked at it with awe. As might be expected in the case of a King whose own people admitted that the one thing he lacked was dignity, his Court seems to have been the shoddiest affair that could be imagined; we used to hear many stories of its vulgarities. Old Lady Sandwich, grandmother of the present earl, spent much Irish wit upon it. Her descriptions of the bourgeois courtiers were inimitable. She happened to go to an audience just about the time that there was so much fuss about poor Queen Pomaré—the ex-Queen of Tahiti. The equerry who was to announce her asked the English lady’s name. “La Comtesse de Sandwich.” “Pardon, Madame, je n’ai pas bien compris.” “La Comtesse de Sandwich.” “Mille pardons, Madame—mais ces noms anglais sont si difficiles.” The man was evidently determined to be insolent, but Lady Sandwich turned the tables on him by saying with a laugh: “Mon Dieu! Monsieur, dites donc la Reine Pomaré!” That smothered him—everybody laughed, and she stalked into the presence majestic and triumphant. Another time at a court ball, she had struggled through the shabby crowd to the buffet and got herself an ice, when a big hand snatched it from her and from the mouth that belonged to the hand there issued, “Enfoncée la petite mère!” She turned round, furious—it was her bootmaker in the garb of the Garde Nationale. He had only seen her back, so had not recognized her. When he did see——!