These dinners, indeed, are our usual hours of meeting, for the occupations of the General, in the Chamber, usually keep him engaged in the morning; nor am I commonly at leisure, myself, until about this hour of the day.  In Paris, every one dines, nominally, at six; but the deputies being often detained a little later, whenever I wish to see him, I hurry from my own table, and generally reach the Rue d’Anjou in sufficient season to find him still at his.

On quitting the Hotel de l’Etat Major, after being dismissed so unceremoniously from the command of the National Guard, Lafayette returned to his own neat but simple lodgings in the Rue d’Anjou.  The hotel, itself, is one of some pretensions, but his apartments, though quite sufficient for a single person, are not among the best it contains, lying on the street, which is rarely or never the case with the principal rooms.  The passage to them communicates with the great staircase, and the door is one of those simple, retired entrances that, in Paris, so frequently open on the abodes of some of the most illustrious men of the age.  Here have I seen princes, marshals, and dignitaries of all degrees, ringing for admission, no one appearing to think of aught but the great man within.  These things are permitted here, where the mind gets accustomed to weigh in the balance all the different claims to distinction; but it would scarcely do in a country, in which the pursuit of money is the sole and engrossing concern of life; a show of expenditure becoming necessary to maintain it.

The apartments of Lafayette consist of a large ante-chamber, two salons, and an inner room, where he usually sits and writes, and in which, of late, he has had his bed.  These rooms are en suite, and communicate, laterally, with one or two more, and the offices.  His sole attendants in town, are the German valet, named Bastien, who accompanied him in his last visit to America, the footman who attends him with the carriage, and the coachman (there may be a cook, but I never saw a female in the apartments).  Neither wears a livery, although all his appointments, carriages, horses, and furniture, are those of a gentleman.  One thing has struck me as a little singular.  Notwithstanding his strong attachment to America and to her usages, Lafayette, while the practice is getting to be common in Paris, has not adopted the use of carpets.  I do not remember to have seen one, at La Grange, or in town.

When I show myself at the door, Bastien, who usually acts as porter, and who has become quite a diplomatist in these matters, makes a sign of assent, and intimates that the General is at dinner.  Of late, he commonly dispenses with the ceremony of letting it be known who has come, but I am at once ushered into the bed-room.  Here I find Lafayette seated at a table, just large enough to contain one cover and a single dish; or a table, in other words, so small as to be covered with a napkin.  His little white lap-dog is his