All Europe was engrossed with the question of the Pope’s successor.  Intrigues and undercurrents were going on hard in Rome, and the issue of the conclave was impatiently awaited.  No one could predict any result.  The election of Cardinal Pecci, future Leo XIII, seemed satisfactory, at least in the beginning.

My winter passed pleasantly enough; I began to feel more at home in my new quarters, and saw many interesting people of all kinds.  Every now and then there would be a very lively debate in the Parliament.  W. would come home very late, saying things couldn’t go on like that, and we would surely be out of office in a few weeks.  We always kept our house in the rue Dumont d’Urville, and I went over every week, often thinking that in a few days we should be back there again.

One of my great trials was a reception day.  W. thought I ought to have one, so every Friday I was at home from three until six, and very long afternoons they were.  I insisted upon having a tea-table, which was a novelty in those days, but it broke the stiff semicircle of red and gold armchairs carefully arranged at one end of the room.  Very few men took tea.  It was rather amusing to see some of the deputies who didn’t exactly like to refuse a cup of tea offered to them by the minister’s wife, holding the cup and saucer most carefully in their hands, making a pretence of sipping the tea and replacing it hastily on the table as soon as it was possible.  I had of course a great many people of different nationalities, who generally didn’t know each other.  The ambassadresses and ministers’ wives sat on each side of my sofa—­the smaller people lower down.  They were all announced, my huissier, Gerard, doing it very well, opening the big doors and roaring out the names.  Sometimes, at the end of the day, some of my own friends or some of the young men from the chancery would come in, and that would cheer me up a little.  There was no conversation, merely an exchange of formal phrases, but I had some funny experiences.

One day I had several ladies whom I didn’t know at all, wives of deputies, or small functionaries at some of the ministries.  One of my friends, Comtesse de B., was starting for Italy and Rome for the first time.  She had come to ask me all sorts of questions about clothes, hotels, people to see, etc.  When she went away in a whirl of preparations and addresses, I turned to one of my neighbours, saying:  “Je crois qu’on est tres bien a l’Hotel de Londres a Rome,” quite an insignificant and inoffensive remark—­merely to say something.  She replied haughtily:  “Je n’en sais rien, Madame; je n’ai jamais quitte Paris et je m’en vante.”  I was so astonished that I had nothing to say, but was afterward sorry that I had not continued the conversation and asked her why she was so especially proud of never having left Paris.  Travelling is usually supposed to enlarge one’s ideas.  Her answer might have been interesting.  W. wouldn’t believe it when I told him, but I said I couldn’t really have invented it.  I used to go into his cabinet at the end of the day always, when he was alone with Pontecoulant, and tell them all my experiences which W. forbid me to mention anywhere else.  I had a good many surprises, but soon learned never to be astonished and to take everything as a matter of course.