In all these gatherings I aimed at paying back the Russians and Germans in Paris a few of the favours they had so thoughtfully and amiably rendered me in their own country. Almost every day I saw Princess Dolgoruki, who had been such an angel to me in St. Petersburg. She enjoyed being in Paris very well. One evening I found the Viscount de Segur at her house. I had often seen him before the Revolution; he was then young and fashionable, and made a thousand conquests through his personal graces. When I saw him again at the Princess's his face was expressionless and wrinkled; he wore a wig with symmetrical curls at each side, leaving his forehead bald. Another twelve years and the wig aged him so that I could barely recognise him excepting by his voice. Princess Dolgoruki came to see me the day of her presentation to Bonaparte. I asked her what she thought of the First Consul's court. "It is not a court," she replied, "but a power." The thing must of course have appeared to her in that light, being accustomed to the court of St. Petersburg, which is so large and brilliant, whereas at the Tuileries she found few women and a prodigious number of military men of all grades. Among all the amusements that residence in Paris afforded me, I was none the less pursued by innumerable black thoughts, which assailed me even in the midst of pleasures. To put an end to such a painful state of mind, I determined to take a journey. More than once, while I was at Rome, the newspapers had had it that I was at London, but the fact was I had never seen that city. Accordingly, I resolved to go there. CHAPTER XVI UNMERRY ENGLAND LONDON -- ITS HISTORIC PILES -- AND DULL SUNDAYS -- AND TACITURN PEOPLE -- PICTURES BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS -- HIS MODESTY -- HOW TO DRY PICTURES IN A DAMP CLIMATE -- THE ARTISTIC VIEW OF A CERTAIN POPULAR BEAUTY -- THE PRINCE OF WALES -- HIS ALLEGED ATTENTIONS TO MME. LEBRUN -- THE AUTHORESS LECTURES AN UNFRIENDLY CRITIC -- NEWS OF ONE OF NAPOLEON'S "ATROCIOUS CRIMES." I started for London on the 15th of April, 1802. I knew not a word of English. True, I was accompanied by an English maid, but the girl had long been serving me badly, and I was obliged to dismiss her very shortly after my arrival in London, because she did nothing but eat bread and butter all day. Luckily I had brought some one besides, a charming person to whom ill-fortune made the home she had found under my roof very precious. This was my faithful Adelaide, who lived with me on the footing of a friend, and whose attentions and counsels have always been most valuable to me. On disembarking at Dover I was at first somewhat affrighted at the view of a whole population assembled on the shore. But I was reassured when informed that the crowd was simply composed of curious idlers, who were following their usual habits in coming down to see the travellers land.