“‘Upon this occasion, I was contented with warming my hands at the scented blaze, and gazing on the portly form of the princess, reclining in ample majesty on the green satin fauteuil before me. Perhaps there never existed a type of ridicule and exaggeration more strongly defined than the Princesse de Guéménée, particularly at this period of her life, when, having lost, by extravagance and folly, the position to which she was entitled by birth and fortune, she appeared as though seeking to gain distinction in another way, by exaggerating the follies of the times, and affording in her person a complete epitome of all the extravagance and bad taste for which the court had become, even then, proverbial. At the very hour of which I am speaking, even when under the ban of dismissal from the court, of reproval from the sovereign, and of the condemnation of all persons of credit and character throughout the kingdom—when it was a notorious fact that her husband and herself were paying loans upon the estates which yet remained to them at the rate of fifty and seventy per cent.—was she attired in all the absurd and costly frippery which a depraved fashion might have excused some years before, when she was yet in possession of the stupendous fortune which so long had caused the Rohans to rival in splendour the sovereign himself, but which would only excite pity and disgust in the minds of those aware of the desperate state of her affairs. “‘She was attired in a robe of I know not what kind of rich stuff, which stood on end, and completely filled the immense arm-chair in which she was seated. This again was entirely covered with the richest lace, which, looped with ornaments in brilliants, representing _scorpions_, fell over either elbow of the chair, completely disguising its form, thus leaving the princess to represent to the beholder the richly-decorated joss of some Chinese temple, that scorns, in virtue of its divinity, the support which mortals need when seated. Altogether I scarcely ever remember to have seen a more ridiculous figure than that of the Princesse de Guéménée as she sat thus before me, the light of the fire dancing upon the diamonds with which she was covered from head to foot, now resting upon the thick rouge upon her cheeks, then flying off to some absurd and comical ornament with which she had thought fit to load the towering fabric of her powdered hair, and making her countenance take all kinds of fantastic expressions, as though she had been the sport of some merry demon.