I shall never forget my first interview with the prince, nor the singular impression which this very Courtiade then produced upon me. I was admitted, as was usual with all persons who came upon affairs demanding attention and privacy, at the hour of the prince’s toilet. It was a little while after the revolution of July, and just before his embassy to London. I found the renowned diplomatist seated tranquilly at his bureau, which mostly served him both for writing and dressing table. It was, I believe, upon the very day that the prince was to take his farewell audience of Louis Philippe, ere he set out for England, and he was to appear upon this occasion in the usual court costume. One valet was busily occupied, with a most serious countenance, in powdering, with might and main, the thick masses of his long grey hair. Another was kneeling low at his feet, endeavouring, although with difficulty, from his constrained position beneath the table, to buckle the latchets of his shoes. His secretary was seated at the bureau beside him, occupied in opening, one after the other, a huge collection of letters with astonishing rapidity, scanning the contents of each, quietly throwing some into the waste-paper basket, and placing the rest in a pile beneath for the inspection of the prince. I could not but admire the _sang froid_ with which, while listening to my errand, to him personally of the highest importance, he suffered himself to be invested with the embroidered paraphernalia of his official uniform. When the attire was completed, the door of the chamber opened, and in stalked, with tottering steps, the aged, weather-beaten Courtiade, laden with divers small boxes, of various forms and sizes. These were filled with the ribands and insignia of the multifarious orders with which the prince was decorated. It was curious to witness the total indifference with which he suffered himself to be ornamented, as contrasted with the eager solemnity of Courtiade, to whom the desire to fill this office with becoming dignity (for it was the only duty which in his latest years devolved upon him) had become the chief aim and object of existence. I have been led into this involuntary digression by the remembrance of my own sensations as I traversed the now silent and deserted apartment, and was carried back in memory to that first interview, inwardly comparing the anticipations of that moment with those by which my soul was on this occasion so depressed and saddened.