One evening I found myself with this picturesque personage at Madame de Bléry's. I was listlessly intrenched in a corner, far from the circle of busy talkers, just sufficiently awake to be conscious that I was asleep--a delirious condition, which I recommend to your consideration, resembling the beginning of haschish intoxication--when by some turn in the conversation Madame de Bléry mentioned my name and pointed me out. I was immediately awakened from my torpor and dragged out of my corner. I have been weak enough at times, as Gubetta says, to jingle words at the end of an idea, or to speak more modestly, at the end of certain measured syllables. The Marquise, cognisant of the offence, but not of the extenuating circumstances, launched forth into praise and flattering hyperbole that lifted me to the level of Byron, Goethe, Lamartine, discovered that I had a satanic look, and went on so that I suspected an album. This affected me gloomily and ferociously. There is nothing I despise more than an album, unless it be two of them. To avoid any such attempt, I broke into the most of the conversation with several innocent provincialisms, and effected my retreat in a masterly manner; advancing towards the door by degrees, and reaching it, I sprang outside so suddenly and nimbly that I had gotten to the bottom of the stairs before my absence was discovered. Alas! no one can escape au album when it is predestined! The next day a book, magnificently bound in Russia, arrived in a superb moiré case in the hands of a groom, with an accompanying note from the Infanta soliciting the honor, &c. All great men have their antipathies. James I. could not look upon a glittering sword; Roger Bacon fainted at the sight of an apple; and blank paper fills me with melancholy. However, I resigned myself to the decrees of fate, and scribbled, I don't know what, in the corner, and subscribed my initials as illegible as those of Napoleon when in a passion. This, I flattered myself, was the end of the tragedy, but no: a few days afterwards I received an invitation to a select gathering, in such amiable terms that I resolved to decline it. Talleyrand said, "Never obey your first impulse, because it is good;" I obeyed this Machiavellian maxim, and erred! "_Eucharis_" was being performed at the opera; the sky was filled with ugly, threatening clouds; I sought in vain for a companion to get tight with, and moralize over a few bottles of wine, and so for want of a gayer occupation I went to the Marquise.