We went quite often to Monsieur and Madame Thiers, who received every evening in their big gloomy house in the Place St. Georges.  It was a political centre,—­all the Republican party went there, and many of his old friends, Orleanists, who admired his great intelligence, while disapproving his politics,—­literary men, journalists, all the diplomatists and distinguished strangers.  He had people at dinner every night and a small reception afterward,—­Madame Thiers and her sister, Mademoiselle Dosne, doing the honours for him.  I believe both ladies were very intelligent, but I can’t truthfully say they had any charm of manner.  They never looked pleased to see any one, and each took comfortable little naps in their armchairs after dinner—­the first comers had sometimes rather embarrassing entrances,—­but I am told they held very much to their receptions.  Thiers was wonderful; he was a very old man when I knew him, but his eyes were very bright and keen, his voice strong, and he would talk all the evening without any appearance of fatigue.  He slept every afternoon for two hours, and was quite rested and alert by dinner time.  It was an interesting group of men that stood around the little figure in the drawing-room after dinner.  He himself stood almost always leaning against the mantelpiece.  Prince Orloff, Russian ambassador, was one of the habitues of the salon, and I was always delighted when he would slip away from the group of men and join the ladies in Madame Thiers’s salon, which was less interesting.  He knew everybody, French and foreign, and gave me most amusing and useful little sketches of all the celebrities.  It was he who told me of old Prince Gortschakoff’s famous phrase when he heard of Thiers’s death—­(he died at St. Germain in 1877)—­“Encore une lumiere eteinte quand il y en a si peu qui voient clair,”—­(still another light extinguished, when there are so few who see clearly).  Many have gone of that group,—­Casimir Perier, Leon Say, Jules Ferry, St. Vallier, Comte Paul de Segur, Barthelemy St. Hilaire,—­but others remain, younger men who were then beginning their political careers and were eager to drink in lessons and warnings from the old statesman, who fought gallantly to the last.

I found the first winter in Paris as the wife of a French deputy rather trying, so different from the easy, pleasant life in Rome.  That has changed, too, of course, with United Italy and Rome the capital, but it was a small Rome in our days, most informal.  I don’t ever remember having written an invitation all the years we lived in Rome.  Everybody led the same life and we saw each other all day, hunting, riding, driving, in the villas in the afternoon, generally finishing at the Pincio, where there was music.  All the carriages drew up and the young men came and talked to the women exactly as if they were at the opera or in a ballroom.  When we had music or danced at our house, we used to tell some well-known man to say “on danse chez Madame King ce soir.”  That was all.  Paris society is much stiffer, attaches much more importance to visits and reception days.