Page:Recollections of a minister to France, 1869-1877 (Vol. I).djvu/24

2 after serving in the State Department until the seventeenth day of March, 1869, I sent in my resignation, and was then commissioned as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to France. Leaving New York on the French steamer Péreire, on the first day of May, 1869, in twelve days I found myself in Paris. Major-General John A. Dix, of New York, was my predecessor, and in a few days after my arrival he put me in communication with the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Marquis de La Valette. The Marquis was a man of much experience in diplomatic affairs, a member of the Senate, and had been Minister of the Interior and member of the Conseil Privé before entering into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was a man of genteel personal appearance, and very polite and agreeable. After he retired from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was sent as Ambassador to London. In a few months, however, he returned to Paris, and took his place in the Senate, where he sat until the revolution of the fourth of September, 1870, and then entered into private life. He married an American lady, a widow with a large fortune. But like most American ladies who have married titled foreigners or men in high position, she had as little to do with Americans as possible.

General Dix and the Marquis de La Valette arranged for the presentation of my letters of credence to the Emperor, on Sunday the twenty-third day of May, 1869. It was to me an entry upon a new career, and into a field in which I had never had any experience.

Paris, then the most attractive city in the world, was bright and beautiful, as it always is in that vernal season of the year. The Emperor, residing at the Tuileries, was in the midst of a brilliant court, and was surrounded with glittering splendor. Princes and Dukes,