Madame d'Abrantès may be considered as the inventor, in France, of what has since become so widely spread under the name of _les salons picaresques_, and of what, at the present day, is famous under the appellation of the _demi-monde_. Her example has been followed by numberless imitators, and now, instead of presuming (as was the habit formerly) that those only receive who are rich enough to do so, it is constantly inquired, when any one in Paris opens his or her house, whether he or she is ruined, and whether the _soirées_ given are meant merely to throw dust into people's eyes. The history of the tea-spoons--so singular at the moment of its occurrence--has since been parodied a hundred times over, and sometimes by mistresses of houses whose fortune was supposed to put them far above all such expedients. Madame d'Abrantès, we again say, was the founder of a _genre_ in Paris society, and as such is well worth studying. The _genre_ is by no means the most honorable, but it is one too frequently found now in the social centres of the French capital for the essayist on Paris _salons_ to pass it over unnoticed. The _salon_ of Mme. Récamier is one of a totally different order, and the world-wide renown of which may make it interesting to the reader of whatever country. As far as age was concerned, Mme. Récamier was the contemporary of Mme. d'Abrantès, of Gérard, nay, almost of Mme. Lebrun; for the renown of her beauty dates from the time of the French Revolution, and her early friendships associate her with persons who even had time to die out under the first Empire; but the _salon_ of Madame Récamier was among the exclusively modern ones, and enjoyed all its lustre and its influence only after 1830. The cause of this is obvious: the circumstance that attracted society to Mme. Récamier's house was no other than the certainty of finding there M. de Chateaubriand. He was the divinity of the temple, and the votaries flocked around his shrine. Before 1830 the temple had been elsewhere, and, until her death, Mme. la Duchesse de Duras was the high-priestess of the sanctuary, where a few privileged mortals only were admitted to bow down before the idol. It is inconceivable how easy a certain degree of renown finds it in Paris to establish one of these undisputed sovereignties, before which the most important, highest, most considerable individualities abdicate their own merit, and prostrate themselves in the dust. M. de Chateaubriand in no way justified the kind of worship that was paid him, nor did he even obtain it so long as he was in a way actively to justify it. It was when he grew old and produced nothing, and was hourly more and more rusted over by selfishness, churlishness, and an exorbitant adoration of his own genius, that the society of his country fell down upon its knees before him, and was ready to make any sacrifice to insure to itself the honor of one of his smiles or one of his looks. In this