The season is in full swing, and yesterday a number of new people "descended," as the French say, at the National. First in importance were the Prince and Princesse di Spezzia from Florence; the Maréchale de Vichy-Pontoise; Mademoiselle Liane de Pougy of the Folies Bergère; and Professor Chzweiczy, who has discovered the bacillus of paralysis, and whose great scientific work "The Blot on the Brain" has been translated into all the European languages. This morning there was an enormous crowd on the _quai_ in front of the hotel; Blanche said she was sure a crowned head had arrived, but I thought it was more likely that someone had had a fit, for we could see a circle had been formed round something or someone, people were tiptoeing and crushing one another, and I expected a _sergent de ville_ to cry every moment, "Air! air!" as they did in Regent Street that morning when we were coming out of Fuller's and found the Duchesse of Rougemont's footman foaming on the pavement. But Blanche insisted it was an emperor, and she was backed up by Thérèse, who said it was just like the crowds she had seen in Paris when the Czar came. We found everybody we knew sitting in the hall of the hotel and in very bad humour, because it was awfully hot and stuffy, and the waiters had brought all the chairs inside lest they should be broken by the crowd. I asked the Marquise what had happened, and she said, with a shrug, it was only Liane de Pougy taking the air under the chestnuts. Professor Chzweiczy sat in the same spot all the afternoon reading "The Blot on the Brain," and the letters on the cover were so big that the Vicomte said you could distinguish them across the _quai_, but nobody paid any attention to him. {_Signor Stefano Crestfallen_} The Princesse di Spezzia held quite a court in the hall, and stared at everybody through her lorgnettes; they say she is at the head of Florentine society and a young Italian, who has a _magasin_ on the _quai_ Schweitzerhof, and comes to the dances at the National because men are scarce, has begged Mr. Vanduzen to present him. But Mr. Vanduzen refused, and Signor Stefano went off crestfallen, finding it, I daresay, quite impossible to reconcile the selling of precious stones behind a counter with his social ambitions. Blanche spent the morning yesterday automobiling with the Vicomte and the Marquise, while I remained in the verandah to rest, as we were to drive after lunch with Sir Charles to a Schloss twenty miles away to a garden party. Mrs. Johnson kept me company, and told me that Count Albert had gone to the Rigi for the day with Mrs. Isaacs and Rosalie. She said they had been presented at Berlin and Brussels, and had intended to enjoy the same experience at Dresden last winter, as they had letters to the Minister there, but he made some paltry objection and she had not pressed the matter, though she added that she had written to the Senator, to whom the Minister owed his place, and that he would make it hot for him.