There also came to these evenings a tall and beautiful young Irishwoman, called Mary Neale, in the charge of her guardian. She noticed a wound lurking in my gaze, for she said to me: "You carry your heart in a sling." I carried my heart anyhow. Mrs. O'Larry left for Dublin; then, moving once more from the neighbourhood of the colony of the poor Emigration of the east, I arrived, from lodging to lodging, in the quarter of the rich Emigration of the west, among the bishops, the Court families, and the West Indian planters. Peltier had come back to me: he had got married as a joke; he was the same boaster as always, lavishly obliging, and frequenting his neighbours' pockets rather than their society. I made several new acquaintances, particularly in the society in which I had family connections: Christian de Lamoignon[201], who had been seriously wounded in the leg in the engagement at Quiberon, and who is now my colleague in the House of Lords, became my friend. He presented me to Mrs. Lindsay, who was attached to Auguste de Lamoignon[202], his brother: the Président Guillaume[203] was not installed in this fashion at Basville, in the midst of Boileau[204], Madame de Sévigné, and Bourdaloue[205]. Mrs. Lindsay, a lady of Irish descent, with a material mind and a somewhat snappish humour, an elegant figure and attractive features, was gifted with nobility of soul and elevation of character: the Emigrants of quality spent their evenings by the fireside of the last of the Ninons[206]. The old monarchy was going under, with all its abuses and all its graces. It will be dug up one day, like those skeletons of queens, decked with necklaces, bracelets and ear-rings, which they exhume in Etruria. At Mrs. Lindsay's I met M. Malouet[207] and Madame du Belloy, a woman worthy of affection, the Comte de Montlosier and the Chevalier de Panat[208]. The last had a well-earned reputation for wit, dirtiness, and gluttony; he belonged to that audience of men of taste who used formerly to sit with folded arms in the presence of French society: idlers whose mission was to look on at everything and criticize everything; they exercised the functions which the newspapers fulfill to-day, without the same bitterness, but also without attaining their great popular influence. [Sidenote: The Comte de Montlosier.] Montlosier continued to ride cock-horse on his famous phrase of the "wooden cross," a phrase somewhat smoothed down by me, when I revived it, but true at bottom. On leaving France he went to Coblentz: he was badly received by the Princes, had a quarrel, fought a duel at night on the bank of the Rhine, and was run through. Being unable to move and quite unable to see, he asked the seconds if the point of the sword was sticking out behind: "Only three inches," said they, feeling him. "Then it's nothing," replied Montlosier. "Sir, withdraw your weapon."