The salon of the Duchesse d’Abrantes was one of the first of a species which has since then found imitators by scores and hundreds throughout France.  It was the salon of a person not in herself sufficiently superior or even celebrated to attract the genuine superiorities of the country without the accessory attractions of luxury, and not sufficiently wealthy to draw around her by her splendid style of receiving, and to disdain the bait held out to those she invited by the presence of great “lions.”  Gerard gave to his guests, at twelve o’clock at night, a cup of tea and “eternally the same cakes” all the year round; but Gerard was the type of the great honors rendered, as we have observed, to Art under the Empire, and to his house men went as equals, whose daily occupations made them the associates of kings.  This was not the case with the Duchesse d’Abrantes.  She had notoriety, not fame.  Her “Memoires” had been read all through Europe, but it is to be questioned whether anything beyond curiosity was satisfied by the book, and it certainly brought to its author little or none of that which in France stands in lieu even of fortune, but which is not easy to obtain, namely,—­consideration.

The Duchesse d’Abrantes was rather popular than otherwise; she was even beloved by a certain number of persons; but she never was what is termed consideree,—­and this gave to her salon a different aspect from that of the others we have spoken of.  A dozen names could be mentioned, whose wearers, without any means of “entertaining” their friends, or giving them more than a glass of eau sucree, were yet surrounded by everything highest and best in the land, simply because they were gens considerables, as the phrase went; but Mme. d’Abrantes, who more or less received all that mixed population known by the name of tout Paris, never was, we repeat, consideree.

The way in which Mme. Ancelot introduces her “friend,” the poor Duchesse d’Abrantes, on the scene, is exceedingly amusing and natural; and we have here at once the opportunity of applying the remark we made in commencing these pages, upon Mme. Ancelot’s truthfulness.  She is the habituee of the house of Mme. d’Abrantes; she professes herself attached to the Duchess; yet she does not scruple to tell everything as it really is, nor, out of any of the usual little weaknesses of friendship, does she omit any one single detail that proves the strange and indeed somewhat “Bohemian” manner of life of her patroness.  We, the readers of her book, are obviously obliged to her for her indiscretions; with those who object to them from other motives we have nothing to do.

Here, then, is the fashion in which we are introduced to Mme. la Duchesse d’Abrantes, widow of Marshal Junot, and a born descendant of the Comneni, Emperors of Byzantium.