more turned aside out of the great thoroughfare, and stopped at a private house in a quiet street.  A carriage driving off, a cab drawing up behind our own, open windows with drawn blinds, upon which were profiled passing shadows of the guests within, and the ringing tones of a soprano voice, accompanied by a piano, gave sufficient indication of a party, and had served to attract a little crowd of soldiers and gamins about the doorway.

Having left our over-coats with a servant, we were ushered upstairs, and, as the song was not yet ended, slipped in unannounced and stationed ourselves just between two crowded drawing-rooms, where, sheltered by the folds of a muslin curtain, we could see all that was going on in both.  I observed, at a glance, that I was now in a society altogether unlike that which I had just left.

At Rachel’s there were present only two ladies besides herself, and those were members of her own family.  Here I found at least an equal proportion of both sexes.  At Rachel’s a princely magnificence reigned.  Here the rooms were elegant, but simple; the paintings choice but few; the ornaments costly, but in no unnecessary profusion.

“It is just the difference between taste and display,” said Dalrymple.  “Rachel is an actress, and Madame de Courcelles is a lady.  Rachel exhibits her riches as an Indian chief exhibits the scalps of his victims—­Madame de Courcelles adorns her house with no other view than to make it attractive to her friends.”

“As a Greek girl covers her head with sequins to show the amount of her fortune, and an English girl puts a rose in her hair for grace and beauty only,” said I, fancying that I had made rather a clever observation.  I was therefore considerably disappointed when Dalrymple merely said, “just so.”

The lady in the larger room here finished her song and returned to her seat, amid a shower of bravas.

“She sings exquisitely,” said I, following her with my eyes.

“And so she ought,” replied my friend.  “She is the Countess Rossi, whom you may have heard of as Mademoiselle Sontag.”

“What! the celebrated Sontag?” I exclaimed.

“The same.  And the gentleman to whom she is now speaking is no less famous a person than the author of Pelham.”

I was as much delighted as a rustic at a menagerie, and Dalrymple, seeing this, continued to point out one celebrity after another till I began no longer to remember which was which.  Thus Lamartine, Horace Vernet, Scribe, Baron Humboldt, Miss Bremer, Arago, Auber, and Sir Edwin Landseer, were successively indicated, and I thought myself one of the most fortunate fellows in Paris, only to be allowed to look upon them.

“I suppose the spirit of lion-hunting is an original instinct,” I said, presently.  “Call it vulgar excitement, if you will; but I must confess that to see these people, and to be able to write about them to my father, is just the most delightful thing that has happened to me since I left home.”