France -- Description and travel; France -- Social life and customs
All this time, I have forgotten Count Pozzo di Borgo, the Russian
ambassador. Being a bachelor, he came alone. It might have been fancy,
but I thought he appeared more at his ease under the American roof than
any of his colleagues. The perfect good understanding between our own
government and that of Russia extends to their representatives, and,
policy or not, we are better treated by them than by any other foreign
ministers. This fact should be known and appreciated, for as one citizen
of the republic, however insignificant, I have no notion of being
blackguarded and vituperated half a century, and then cajoled into
forgetfulness, at the suggestions of fear and expediency, as
circumstances render our good-will of importance. Let us at least show
that we are not mannikins to be pulled about for the convenience and
humours of others, but that we know what honest words are, understand
the difference between civility and abuse, and have pride enough to
resent contumely, when, at least, we feel it to be unmerited. M. Pozzo
is a handsome man, of good size and a fine dark eye, and has a greater
reputation for talents than any other member of the diplomatic corps now
at Paris. He is by birth a Corsican, and, I have heard it said,
distantly related to Bonaparte. This may be true, Corsica being so small
a country; just as some of us are related to everybody in West Jersey.
Our party now consisted of the prime minister, the secretary of foreign
affairs, the Austrian and English ambassadors, and the Prussian
minister, with their wives,--the Nuncio, the Russian and Spanish
ambassadors, the Swiss charge-d'affaires, Mr. Canning, Lord Clanricarde,
--Mr. Mrs. and Miss Gallatin, and the other Americans already mentioned,
or twenty-five in all.
If I had been struck with the rapid and business-like manner in which
the company entered, I was amused with the readiness with which they
paired off when dinner was announced. It was like a _coup de theatre_,
every man and woman knowing his or her exact rank and precedency, and
the time when to move. This business of getting out of a drawing-room to
a dinner-table is often one of difficulty, though less frequently in
France than in most other European countries, on account of the
admirable tact of the women, who seldom suffer a knotty point to get the
ascendancy, but, by choosing the gentlemen for themselves, settle the
affair off hand. From their decision, of course, there is no appeal. In
order that in your simplicity you may not mistake the importance of this
moment, I will relate an anecdote of what lately occurred at a dinner
given by an English functionary in Holland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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