The Comte de Moustier had succeeded Barbé-Marbois as French minister to the United States, and was so addicted to entertaining that he was wont to say that he was “but a tavern-keeper;” adding, facetiously, that “the Americans had the complaisance not to demand his recall.”[14] Of the new ambassador Mr. Madison wrote to Mr. Jefferson, in Paris, “It is with much pleasure I inform you that Moustier begins to make himself acceptable; and with still more that Madame Bréhan begins to be viewed in the light which I hope she merits.” This lady was Anne-Flore Millet, Marquise de Bréhan, a sister of the Comte de Moustier, who assisted him in doing the honors of his house. She is described as a singular, whimsical old woman, who delighted in playing with a negro child and caressing a monkey. With all her eccentricities, she seems to have been possessed of some talent and considerable skill as an artist, as she not only executed several portraits of Washington, but achieved a feat known to few portrait-painters, that of pleasing the sitter himself. About a week before the Comte de Moustier’s entertainment, the inauguration ball was held, and, if we are to credit contemporaneous gossip, was a very grand and imposing function. Although those were days of stage-coaching and slow travel, a number of visitors from other cities were in New York, as appears from a letter written by Miss Bertha Ingersoll, from the scene of the festivities, to Miss Sallie McKean in Philadelphia. “We shall remain here,” she writes, “even if we have to sleep in tents, as so many will have to do. Mr. Williamson had promised to engage us rooms at Frauncis’s, but that was jammed long ago, as was every other decent public house, and now while we are waiting at Mrs. Vandervoort’s, in Maiden Lane, till after dinner, two of our beaux are running about town determined to obtain the best places for us to stay at which can be opened for love or money or the most persuasive speeches.”