Then follows an account of a fancy bal monstre at the Tuileries, which might have turned out, says the writer, to deserve that title in another sense.  It was believed that a plot had been formed for the assassination of the King, at the moment, when, according to his invariable custom, he took his stand at the door of the supper-room to receive the ladies there.  Four thousand five hundred tickets had been issued and a certain number of these, still blank, had disappeared.  That was certain.  And it was also certain that the King did not go to the door of the supper-room as usual.  But the writer remarks that the tickets may have been stolen by, or for, people who could not obtain them legitimately.  But the instantly conceived suspicion of a plot is illustrative of the conditions of feeling and opinions in Paris at the time.

“For my part,” continues Mademoiselle D’Henin, “I never enjoyed a ball so much; perhaps because I did not expect to be amused; perhaps because all the royal family, the Jockey Club, and the fastidious Frenchwomen congratulated me upon my toilet, and voted it one of the handsomest there.  They said the most becoming (but that was de l’eau benite de Cour); perhaps it was because the Dukes of Orleans, Nemours, and Aumale, who never dance, and did so very little that evening, all three honoured me with a quadrille.  You see I expose to you all the very linings of my heart I dissect it and exhibit all the vanity it contains.  But you will excuse me when I tell you of a compliment that might have turned a wiser head than mine.  The fame of my huntress’s costume (Mademoiselle D’Henin was in those days the very beau-ideal of a Diana!) was such that it reached the ears of the wife of our butcher, who sent to beg that I would lend it to her to copy, as she was going to a fancy ball!”

A letter of the 8th of August, 1842, written from Fulham Palace, contains some interesting notices of the grief and desolation caused by the sad death of the Duke of Orleans.

“Was there ever a more afflicting calamity!” she writes.  “When last I wrote his name in a letter to you, it was to describe him as the admired of all beholders, the hero of the fete, the pride and honour of France, and now what remains of him is in his grave!  The affliction of his family baffles all description.  I receive the most touching accounts from Paris.  Some ladies about the Court write to me that nothing can equal their grief.  As long as the coffin remained in the chapel at Neuilly, the members of the family were incessantly kneeling by the side of it, praying and weeping.  The King so far mastered his feelings, that whenever he had official duties to perform, he was sufficiently composed to perform son metier de Roi.  But when the painful task was done he would rush to the chapel, and weep over the dead body of his son, till the whole palace rang with his cries and lamentations.  When the body was removed