But with a graver manner he went on to say, that the most unpleasant part of the circumstance connected with dealing with Napoleon arose from the fact that he was not a gentleman in any sense of the word, or anything like one. Of course the prince, with his unblemished sixteen quarterings, was not talking of anything connected with Napoleon’s birth. And I doubt whether he may have been aware that Napoleon Buonaparte was technically gentle by virtue of his descent from an ancient Tuscan territorial noble race. Metternich, in expressing the opinion quoted, was not thinking of anything of the kind. He was speaking of the moral nature of the man. In these days, after all that has since that time been published on the subject, the expression of Metternich seems almost like the enunciation of an accepted and recognised truism. Nevertheless, even now the judgment on such a point, of one who had enjoyed (no, certainly not enjoyed, but we will say undergone) so much personal intercourse with the great conqueror, is worth recording. My mother has given an account of the same conversation, which I have here recorded, in the second volume of her book on _Vienna and the Austrians_. Her account tallies with mine in all essentials (I did not read it--in _this_ half-century--till after I had written the above sentences); but she relates one or two circumstances which I have omitted; and she apparently did not hear what the prince said afterwards about Napoleon as a gentleman--or perhaps it was said upon another occasion, which I cannot assert may not have been the case. One point of my mother’s narrative should not be omitted. Metternich, observing that it was impossible for any human being to have heard what passed between him and Napoleon, but that everybody had read all about it, said that Savary relates truly the incident of the hat, _which must have been told him by Napoleon himself_. This is very curious. Another amusing anecdote recounted by Metternich one evening, when my mother and myself, together with only a very small circle of _habitués_ were present, I remember well, and intended to give my own reminiscences of it in this place. But I find the story so well told by my mother, and it is so well worth repeating, that I will reproduce her telling of it.