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136 of it as the palace. Subsequently this was not so strictly observed. Now they are more daring, and the Debats writes about "the court"—la cour! "We are going full speed backward to the Restoration," said to me a too-susceptible friend, when he read that the sister of the King is called "Madame." Such distrust borders on the ridiculous.

"And we are going still farther back to the Restoration!" cried the same friend, since then pale with fright. For he had seen something horrible at a soirée, which was a beautiful young lady with powdered hair! To tell the truth, it was really very becoming; the blonde locks seemed to be lightly touched with frost, and the warm and fresh flowers peeped out from them with a more touching loveliness. The lady of whom I speak is Madam Lelion, wife of the Belgian ambassador, and she is an enchanting Flemish beauty, who would seem to have stepped out of a picture by Rubens.

"The Twenty-first of January" was in like manner the retort by which, in the Chamber of Peers, disguised hereditary passion and the boldest aristocracy revealed themselves. What I had long foreseen then came to pass. The aristocracy bore and behaved itself as if specially privileged to bewail the death of Louis XVI., and it mocked the French people by maintaining the