W. at once convoked all the officials and staff of the ministry. He made very few changes, merely taking the young Count de Lasteyrie, now Marquis de Lasteyrie, grandnephew of the Marquis de Lafayette, son of M. Jules de Lasteyrie, a senator and devoted friend of the Orléans family, as his chef de cabinet. Two or three days after the new cabinet was announced, W. took me to the Elysée to pay my official visit to the Maréchale de MacMahon. She received us up-stairs in a pretty salon looking out on the garden. She was very civil, not a particularly gracious manner--gave me the impression of a very energetic, practical woman--what most Frenchwomen are. I was very much struck with her writing-table, which looked most businesslike. It was covered with quantities of letters, papers, cards, circulars of all kinds--she attended to all household matters herself. I always heard (though she did not tell me) that she read every letter that was addressed to her, and she must have had hundreds of begging letters. She was very charitable, much interested in all good works, and very kind to all artists. Whenever a letter came asking for money, she had the case investigated, and if the story was true, gave practical help at once. I was dismayed at first with the number of letters received from all over France asking my intercession with the minister on every possible subject from a "monument historique" to be restored, to a pension given to an old schoolmaster no longer able to work, with a large family to support. It was perfectly impossible for me to answer them. Being a foreigner and never having lived in France, I didn't really know anything about the various questions. W. was too busy to attend to such small matters, so I consulted M. de L., chef de cabinet, and we agreed that I should send all the correspondence which was not strictly personal to him, and he would have it examined in the "bureau." The first few weeks of W.'s ministry were very trying to me--I went to see so many people,--so many people came to see me,--all strangers with whom I had nothing in common. Such dreary conversations, never getting beyond the most ordinary commonplace phrases,--such an absolutely different world from any I had ever lived in.