This belief of mine controverts the assertion of the poet—­

     “He best can paint them who has felt them most.”

Except that the poet says who has felt; yes, it is after, and not when most felt that sentiments can be most powerfully expressed.  But to bed! to bed!]

I have had a busy day; engaged during the greater portion of it in the momentous occupation of shopping.  Every thing belonging to my toilette is to be changed, for I have discovered—­“tell it not in Gath”—­that my hats, bonnets, robes, mantles, and pelisses, are totally passee de mode, and what the modistes of Italy declared to be la derniere mode de Paris is so old as to be forgotten here.

The woman who wishes to be a philosopher must avoid Paris!  Yesterday I entered it, caring or thinking as little of la mode as if there were no such tyrant; and lo! to-day, I found myself ashamed, as I looked from the Duchess de Guiche, attired in her becoming and pretty peignoir a la neige and chapeau du dernier gout, to my own dress and bonnet, which previously I had considered very wearable, if not very tasteful.

Our first visit was to Herbault’s, the high-priest of the Temple of Fashion at Paris; and I confess, the look of astonishment which he bestowed on my bonnet did not help to reassure my confidence as to my appearance.

The Duchesse, too quick-sighted not to observe his surprise, explained that I had been six years absent from Paris, and only arrived the night before from Italy.  I saw the words a la bonne heure hovering on the lips of Herbault, he was too well-bred to give utterance to them, and immediately ordered to be brought forth the choicest of his hats, caps, and turbans.

Oh, the misery of trying on a new mode for the first time, and before a stranger!  The eye accustomed to see the face to which it appertains enveloped in a chapeau more or less large or small, is shocked at the first attempt to wear one of a different size; and turns from the contemplation of the image presented in the glass with any thing but self-complacency, listening incredulously to the flattering encomiums of the not disinterested marchand de modes, who avers that “Ce chapeau sied parfaitement a Madame la Comtesse, et ce bonnet lui va a ravir.”

I must, however, render M. Herbault the justice to say, that he evinced no ordinary tact in suggesting certain alterations in his chapeaux and caps, in order to suit my face; and, aided by the inimitable good taste of the Duchesse, who passes for an oracle in affaires de modes a Paris, a selection was made that enabled me to leave M. Herbault’s, looking a little more like other people.

From his Temple of Fashion we proceeded to the lingere a la mode, Mdlle.  La Touche, where canezous and robes de matin were to be chosen and ordered; and we returned to the Hotel de la Terrasse, my head filled with notions of the importance of dressing a la mode, to which yesterday it was a stranger, and my purse considerably lightened by the two visits I had paid.