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 XXI. PARIS RE-OPENED. Fox—Rogers—Erskine—Mackintosh—Bentham—Romilly— Kemble—Watt—Aberdeen—High Life—Treasure-seekers.

Paris was re-opened to British visitors by the signature of preliminaries of peace, it became again, as Horace Walpole had said of it in 1763, "the way of all flesh." Ten years of abstinence had sharpened the appetite, and everybody was anxious to see how much the city had altered since the Revolution. People of fashion were curious to know whether its gaiety had revived. Politicians were eager to behold the young ruler whose career had already been so romantic, and whose star was evidently still in the ascendant. Madame de Stael felt sorely tempted to go and see these English visitors, but prudently refrained, for she had had a hint that her intimacy with Bernadotte on her previous stay in Paris had given offence to the First Consul. Necker, her father, offered, however, to go and smoothe the way for her. Anthony Merry, the English envoy, calculated that in the summer of 1802 there were 5000 of his countrymen in Paris, and that on Lord