“She told me, with a frankness I little expected, that she should never cease to regret the life she led here; she could not even speak of the place without tears, and questioned me, with great minuteness, concerning every individual throughout the province; her memory never failing her in the slightest particular with regard to the genealogy of the different families whose estates lie in the neighbourhood of the château. Her heart seemed to yearn towards the prince, and her expressions of admiration concerning his great talents and wonderful powers of mind were affecting in their truthful simplicity. In spite of the want of elevation of soul, which neither nature nor education had imparted, I still think that the prince entertained a real regard for her, and of many a courteous message from him have I myself been the bearer, whenever it became known at the hôtel Talleyrand that she was labouring under the slightest indisposition. Towards the latter years of her life, however, her pre-occupation concerning all that passed in his household became one of the greatest sources of petty annoyance to which the prince was subjected. For some time before her death, it amounted, indeed, to positive mania. She insisted upon regulating her establishment entirely upon the model of that of the Rue St. Florentin, ruling the minutest details of her domestic economy in imitation of that observed in the prince’s household. She even subjected her own diet and hours of taking her repasts to the same system of imitation, and upon one occasion nearly fell a victim to her over-strict observance of the prince’s rule of never taking more than one meal in the day. “As to the innumerable _naïvetés_ and _coqs-à-l’âne_ which have gone forth to the world as hers, you must not believe one half of them. I think that many of them were invented under the erroneous impression that the surest way of annoying M. de Talleyrand would be to ridicule his wife. It is certain that many of the blunders which are laid to her charge bear the unmistakeable stamp of the firm of Montrond and Co. I once attacked the prince upon the subject, and was much amused at the _bonhomie_ with which he laughed at the bare remembrance of all the _bêtises_ which so many wits had employed themselves in inventing for the poor princess. I asked him if the story, which has gone the round of every newspaper in Europe, about Baron Denon and Robinson Crusoe, were really true. ‘It did not actually happen,’ replied he, smiling; ‘the circumstance did not really occur as it has been represented, _for I was there to prevent it_. However, it was _guessed at_, and that was enough; the blunder was ascribed to her without compunction.’