Our route back to Paris was rendered very agreeable by the lively and clever conversation of the Comtesse de Gand.  I have rarely met with a more amusing person.

With a most retentive memory, she possesses the tact that does not always accompany this precious gift—­that of only repeating what is perfectly a propos and interesting, with a fund of anecdotes that might form an inexhaustible capital for a professional diner-out to set up with; an ill-natured one never escapes her lips, and yet—­hear it all ye who believe, or act as if ye believe, that malice and wit are inseparable allies!—­it would be difficult to find a more entertaining and lively companion.

Our old friend, Col.  E. Lygon, came to see us to-day, and is as amiable as ever.  He is a specimen of a military man of which England may well be proud.

The Ducs de Talleyrand and Dino, the Marquis de Mornay, the Marquis de Dreux-Breze, and Count Charles de Mornay, dined here yesterday.  The Marquis de Breze is a clever man, and his conversation is highly interesting.  Well-informed and sensible, he has directed much of his attention to politics without being, as is too often the case with politicians, wholly engrossed by them.  He appears to me to be a man likely to distinguish himself in public life.

There could not be found two individuals more dissimilar, or more formed for furnishing specimens of the noblemen of la Vieille Cour and the present time, than the Duc de Talleyrand and the Marquis de Dreux-Breze.  The Duc, well-dressed and well-bred, but offering in his toilette and in his manners irrefragable evidence that both have been studied, and his conversation bearing that high polish and urbanity which, if not always characteristics of talent, conceal the absence of it, represents l’ancien regime, when les grands seigneurs were more desirous to serve les belles dames than their country, and more anxious to be distinguished in the salons of the Faubourg St.-Germain than in the Chambre de Parlement.

The Marquis de Dreux-Breze, well-dressed and well-bred, too, appears not to have studied either his toilette or his manners; and, though by no means deficient in polite attention to women, seems to believe that there are higher and more praiseworthy pursuits than that of thinking only how to please them, and bestows more thought on the Chambre des Pairs than on the salons a la mode.

One is a passive and ornamental member of society, the other a useful and active politician, I have remarked that the Frenchmen of high birth of the present time all seem disposed to take pains in fitting themselves for the duties of their station.  They read much and with profit, travel much more than formerly, and are free from the narrow prejudices against other countries, which, while they prove not a man’s attachment to his own, offer one of the most insurmountable of all barriers to that good understanding so necessary to be maintained between nations.