Great interest was naturally excited in the English Colony when we had Royal visitors. Her late Majesty was not in Paris during my Chaplaincy, although she was several times in the South of France, being usually met at some convenient station by the President of the French Republic. Whatever may have been the feeling of the French people towards the English before the “Entente Cordiale,” they always had the highest respect and admiration for our beloved Queen, and I never heard that she met with the least annoyance from “the most polite nation in the world.” [Illustration: RUE DE RIVOLI.] Before coming to the special subject of this chapter, I should like to say a few words about the English Church in the Rue d’Aguesseau, which has always been known as, and is “ipso facto,” the Embassy Church. In former days the English services were held in the ballroom at the Embassy itself, and there was a resident chaplain. I have heard that there was sometimes rather a “rush” after a Saturday night’s ball to get the room ready for divine service on Sunday. This “Chapel” was also at that time somewhat of a Gretna Green, where at twenty-four hours’ notice young couples who had difficulties at home could be united according to English law by a resident chaplain. My friend, Dr. Morgan, of the American Church, kindly sent me a volume of sermons he had picked up on a bookstall, bearing the title “Sermons preached at the Chapel of the British Embassy, and at the Protestant Church of the Oratoire in Paris, by the late Rev. E. Forster, M.A., Chaplain to the British Embassy.” This was in the days when Lord Stuart de Rothesay was Ambassador to the court of France, and the volume bears the date 1828. I believe Lord Stuart de Rothesay was twice Ambassador in Paris—an unusual circumstance. Services are no longer held in the Embassy. The English Colony in Paris having largely increased, it became necessary to provide a suitable building as a church, and at the period when the late Lord Cowley was Ambassador, and largely through his instrumentality, the present Church was purchased, and has from that time to the present been the Embassy Church, where all services of a public and diplomatic character have since been held. Here is a French description of the building, which, while not exactly ecclesiastical, is yet loved and valued by the English Colony. “L’Èglise Anglicane est située à moins de 100 mètres de la porte de l’Ambassade. C’est un petit monument de style Gothique, aux fenètres ogivales, aux frùes colonnes fleuronnées. A l’intérieur, la chapelle est meublée de deux rangées de bancs, placées face à l’autel. Devant celui-ci se trouve l’aigle de bois doré dont les ailes éployées portent les Livres Saints; à gauche les orgues: à droite, la chaire: une simple tribune de pierre, de forme hexagonale légèrement surélevée. Un balcon court sur les deux côtes de la chapelle, dont le fond est occupé par une tribune.”