She witnessed the robbery with calmness, until she saw the brigands seize the portrait of the Emperor Napoleon, presented to her by his own hand, and set round with large brilliants, when she appealed to them with tears streaming down her cheeks to take the settings and all the diamonds, but not to deprive her of the portrait of her "dear, dear Emperor!" When this circumstance was referred to she told me the story, and her eyes glistened with tears while relating it. Went to Orsay yesterday, and passed a very agreeable day there. It was a fortified chateau, and must have been a very fine place before the Revolution caused, not only its pillage, but nearly total destruction, for only one wing of it now remains. Built in the reign of Charles VII, it was esteemed one of the best specimens of the feudal _château fort_ of that epoch; and the subterranean portion of it still attests its former strength and magnitude. It is surrounded by a moat, not of stagnant water, but supplied by the river Ivette, which flows at the base of the hill on which the château stands. The water is clear and brisk and the château looks as if it stood in a pellucid river. The view from the windows is very extensive, commanding a rich and well-wooded country. The chapel escaped not the ravages of the sacrilegious band, who committed such havoc on the château; for the beautiful altar, and some very interesting monuments, were barbarously mutilated, and the tomb of the Princesse de Croy, the mother of General Count d'Orsay, on which a vast sum had been expended, was nearly razed to the ground. If aught was required to increase my horror of revolutions, and of the baleful consequences to which they lead, the sight of this once splendid château, and, above all, of its half-ruined chapel, in which even the honoured dead were insulted, would have accomplished it. An heiress of one of the most ancient houses in the _Pays-Bas_, the Princesse de Croy brought a noble dowry to her husband, himself a man of princely fortune. Young and beautiful, her munificence soon rendered her an object of almost, adoration to the dependents of her lord; and when soon after having given birth to a son and heir, the present General Comte d'Orsay, she was called to another world, her remains were followed to her untimely grave by a long train of weeping poor, whose hearts her bounty had often cheered, and whose descendants were subsequently horror-struck to see the sanctity of her last earthly resting-place invaded. We passed through the hamlet of Palaiseau, on our return to Paris; and saw in it the steeple where the magpie concealed the silver spoons he had stolen, and which occasioned the event from which the drama of _La Pie Voleuse_, known in so many languages, has had its origin.