The two women seated beside the President had square-topped chairs. The President’s chair was surmounted with a little round top. As I was about to draw some inference from this I looked at the other chairs and saw that four or five guests, myself among them, had chairs similar to that of the President. The chairs were covered with red velvet with gilt headed nails. A more serious thing I noticed was that everybody addressed the President of the Republic as “Monseigneur” and “your Highness.” I who had called him “Prince,” had the air of a demagogue. When we rose from table the Prince asked after my wife, and then apologized profusely for the rusticity of the service. “I am not yet installed,” he said. “The day before yesterday, when I arrived here, there was hardly a mattress for me to sleep upon.” The dinner was a very ordinary one, and the Prince did well to excuse himself. The service was of common white china and the silverware bourgeois, worn, and gross. In the middle of the table was a rather fine vase of craquelé, ornamented with ormolu in the bad taste of the time of Louis XVI. However, we heard music in an adjoining hall. “It is a surprise,” said the President to us, “they are the musicians from the Opera.” A minute afterwards programmes written with a pen were handed round. They indicated that the following five selections were being played: 1. Priere de la “Muette.” 2. Fantaisie sur des airs favoris de la “Reine Hortense.” 3. Final de “Robert Bruce”. 4. “Marche Republicaine.” 5. “La Victoire,” pas redoublé. In the rather uneasy state of mind I, like the whole of France, was in at that moment, I could not help remarking this “Victory” piece coming after the “Republican March.” I rose from table still hungry. We went into the grand salon, which was separated from the dining-room by the smaller salon that I had passed through on entering. This grand salon was extremely ugly. It was white, with figures on panels, after the fashion of those of Pompeii, the whole of the furniture being in the Empire style with the exception of the armchairs, which were in tapestry and gold and in fairly good taste. There were three arched windows to which three large mirrors of the same shape at the other end of the salon formed pendants and one of which, the middle one, was a door. The window curtains were of fine white satin richly flowered. While the Prince de la Moskowa and I were talking Socialism, the Mountain, Communism, etc., Louis Bonaparte came up and took me aside.