PARIS, April 8th, 1816.

I delivered my letters to the Wardle family and am very much pleased with them.  I meet a very agreeable society at their house.  Col Wardle is quite a republican and very rigid in his principles.[60] His daughter is a young lady of first rate talents and has already distinguished herself by some poetical compositions.  I met at their house Mrs Wallis, the sister of Sir R. Wilson.[61] She is an enthusiastic Napoleonist, and wears at times a tricolored scarf and a gold chain with a medal of Napoleon’s head attached to it; this head she sometimes, to amuse herself, compels the old emigrants she meets with in society to kiss.  The trial of her brother is now going on for aiding and abetting the escape of Lavalette.  I sincerely hope he will escape any severity of punishment, but I more fear the effects of Tory vengeance against him in England, in the shape of depriving him of his commission, than I do the sentence of any French court.  Yet tho’ I wish him well, I cannot help feeling the remains of a little grudge against him for his calumny against Napoleon in accusing him of poisoning the sick of his own army before the walls of St Jean d’Acre.  I have always vindicated the character of Napoleon from this most unjust and unfounded aspersion, because having been in Egypt with Abercrombie’s army and having had daily intercourse with Belliard’s division of the French army, after the capitulation of Cairo, and during our joint march on the left bank of the Nile to Rosetta, I knew that there was not a syllable of truth in the story.  Mrs Wallis, however, tells me that her brother has expressed deep regret that he ever gave credence and currency to such a report; and that he acknowledges that he was himself deceived.  But he did Napoleon an irreparable injury, and his work on the Egyptian campaign contributed in a very great degree to excite the hatred of the English people against Napoleon, as well as to flatter the passions and prejudices of the Tories.

In the affair however of Lavalette Wilson has nobly retrieved his character and obliterated all recollection of his former error.  It is amazing the popularity he and his two gallant associates have acquired in France by this generous and chevaleresque enterprise.

I meet at Col Wardle’s a very pleasant French society:  conversation, music and singing fill up the evening.

April 15th.

I have been presented to a very agreeable lady, Madame Esther Fournier, who holds a conversazione at her house in the Rue St Honore every Wednesday evening.  Here there is either a concert, a ball or private theatricals; while in a separate room play goes forward and crebs, a game of dice similar to hazard, is the fashionable game.  Refreshments are handed round and at twelve o’clock the company break up.  Mme Fournier is a lady of very distinguished talent and always acts a principal role herself in the dramatic performances given at her private theatricals.