Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/219

Rh was engaged, when she at length applied to another hair-dresser who was in the house, and she had the glory and honor of combing a countess.

The ladies were perfectly infatuated with the countess, and in love with the colonel. There were one or two ladies there who knew the countess and her circumstances, and of a morning on my going to comb them I could scarcely get through my work for laughing.

This colonel worked well in his own way; he had letters to some of our fine families, and they went round with him and innocently imposed him on some of our first families, where the colonel was asked to a musical soiree, together with his cousin the countess, and to many other little entertainments, on account of his being so great a colonel and his standing so near the emperor at the christening of his son. He had promised many ladies if they would visit France he would present them to the emperor.

There was a lady in the hotel who had seen this countess in France, where she had called on her, for if the countess ever heard of an American being in Paris, she always called on them, presuming on her husband's name; and of course, persons in foreign lands will speak to people and treat them with respect they would not look for at home. This lady treated the countess with great respect and introduced her and also the colonel, to all the ladies at the hotel.

Every two or three evenings the colonel was sporting a new suit of regimentals. He could have played a good card with the set of ladies he was among, had the countess not beed so well known amongst the class he desired so much to play on; many of them