The Princess Louise (the Queen of Belgium) and the Princess Marie are pretty, with the quiet subdued manner of well-bred young persons.  The first is pale, has a strikingly Bourbon face, resembling the profiles on the French coins; while the latter has an Italian and classical outline of features, with a fine colour.

They were all dressed with great simplicity; scarcely in high dinner dress; the Queen and Madame Adelaide wearing evening hats.  The Princesses, as is uniformly the case with unmarried French girls of rank, were without any ornaments, wearing their hair in the usual manner.

After the ceremonies of being presented were gone through, I amused myself with examining the company.  This was a levee, not a drawing-room, and there were no women among the visitors.  The men, who did not appear in uniform, were in common evening dress, which has degenerated of late into black stocks and trousers.

Accident brought me next to an old man, who had exactly that revolutionary air which has become so familiar to us by the engravings of Bonaparte and his generals that were made shortly after the Italian campaign.  The face was nearly buried in neckcloth, the hair was long and wild, and the coat was glittering, but ill-fitting and stiff.  It was, however, the coat of a marechal; and, what rendered it still more singular, it was entirely without orders.  I was curious to know who this relic of 1797 might be; for, apart from his rank, which was betrayed by his coat, he was so singularly ugly as scarcely to appear human.  On inquiry it proved to be Marshal Jourdan.

There was some amusement in watching the different individuals who came to pay their court to the new dynasty.  Many were personally and familiarly known to me as very loyal subjects of the last reign; soldiers who would not have hesitated to put Louis-Philippe au fil de l’epee, three months before, at the command of Charles X. But times were changed.  They now came to show themselves to the new sovereign; most of them to manifest their disposition to be put in the way of preferment, some to reconnoitre, others to conceal their disaffection, and all to subserve their own interests.  It was laughably easy to discern who were confident of their reception by being of the ruling party, who distrusted, and who were indifferent.  The last class was small.  A general officer, whom I personally knew, looked like one who had found his way into a wrong house by mistake.  He was a Bonapartist by his antecedents, and in his true way of thinking; but accident had thrown him into the hands of the Bourbons, and he had now come to see what might be gleaned from the House of Orleans.  His reception was not flattering, and I could only compare the indecision and wavering of his manner to that of a regiment that falters before an unexpected volley.