Madame Ancelot is right here, and there were in Paris several of these _salons_, which served as the models for those of all the rest of Europe. Under the Restoration, two illustrious ladies tried to recall to the generation that had sprung from the Empire or from emigration what the famous _salons_ of old had once been, and the Duchesse de Duras and the Marquise de Montcalm (sister to the then minister, the Duc de Richelieu) drew around them all that was in any way distinguished in France. But the many causes we have noted above made the enterprise a difficult one, and the various divergences of society, politically speaking, rendered the task of the mistress of a house one of surpassing arduousness. Mme. de Staël, who, by her very superiority perhaps,--certainly by her vehemence,--was prevented from ever being a perfect example of what was necessary in this respect, acquired the nickname of _Présidente de Salons_; and it would appear, that, with her resolute air, her loud voice, and her violent opinions, she really did seem like a kind of speaker of some House of Commons disguised as a woman. That the management of a _salon_ was no easy affair the following anecdote will prove. The Duchesse de Duras one day asked M. de Talleyrand what he thought of the evening _réunions_ at her house, and after a few words of praise, he added: "But you are too vivacious as yet, too young. Ten years hence you will know better how to manage it all." Mme. de Duras was then somewhere about fifty-four or five! We perceive, therefore, that, according to M. de Talleyrand, the proper manner of receiving a certain circle of _habitués_ was likely to be the study of a whole life.