“Whatever may have been the conduct of Madame Grandt, however reprehensible her facility of morals before her marriage, it cannot be denied that, from the very hour in which this event took place, it became irreproachable. M. de Talleyrand himself loves to render her every justice on that score. She was too proud of the name she bore ever to disgrace it by any action which she would have deemed unworthy. Like _parvenus_ in general, she grew rather intoxicated when arrived at the summit of honour, for, as Princesse de Benevent, her _morgue_ and insolence at the court of Napoleon became proverbial, and many amusing anecdotes are told of her absurd pretensions to royal privileges, her pages and her maids of honour, her chamberlain and mistress of the robes. “I myself once witnessed a curious instance of that total forgetfulness of the ‘_jadis_,’ which seems to be the peculiar failing of persons who have risen from obscurity to rank and fortune. I was one day descending the _perron_ of the hotel in the Rue St. Florentine, when a hackney coach entered the court-yard and drove up to the vestibule. I was greatly surprised to behold alighting from it, fine as court robes and towering plumes could make her, the Princesse de Benevent herself. I of course hastened down the steps to offer her my arm on alighting. ‘My carriage struck against the lamp-post at the entrance of the Tuileries,’ said she, in answer to my inquiring look, ‘and the wheel came off. I was forced to return home in this absurd looking vehicle.’ Then turning to the wondering lacqueys, she added, in a tone of disgust and scorn which no language can describe, as she pointed to the coachman, ‘_Qu’on paie ce malheureux!_’ The mixture of the sublime and ridiculous in the tone and gesture by which the words were accompanied, was absolutely irresistible.