Spent last evening in the Rue d’Anjou, where I met Lady Combermere, the Dowager Lady Hawarden, and Mrs. Masters.  Lady Combermere is lively and agreeable, un peu romanesque, which gives great originality to her conversation, and sings Mrs. Arkwright’s beautiful ballads with great feeling.

Mr. Charles Grant[4] dined here yesterday.  He is a very sensible man, possessing a vast fund of general information, with gentle and highly-polished manners.  What a charm there is in agreeable manners, and how soon one feels at ease with those who possess them!

Spent, or mis-spent, a great portion of the day in visiting the curiosity shops on the Quai Voltaire, and came away from them with a lighter purse than I entered.  There is no resisting, at least I find it so, the exquisite porcelaine de Sevres, off which the dainty dames of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth feasted, or which held their bouquets, or pot pourri.  An etui of gold set with oriental agates and brilliants, and a flacon of rock crystal, both of which once appertained to Madame de Sevigne, vanquished my prudence.

Would that with the possession of these articles, often used by her, I could also inherit the matchless grace with which her pen could invest every subject it touched!  But, alas! it is easier to acquire the beautiful bijouterie, rendered still more valuable by having belonged to celebrated people, than the talent that gained their celebrity; and so I must be content with inhaling esprit de rose from the flacon of Madame de Sevigne, without aspiring to any portion of the esprit for which she was so distinguished.

I am now rich in the possession of objects once belonging to remarkable women, and I am not a little content with my acquisitions.  I can boast the gold and enamelled pincushion of Madame de Maintenon, heart-shaped, and stuck as full of pins as the hearts of the French Protestants were with thorns by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; to which she is said to have so greatly contributed by her counsel to her infatuated lover, Louis the Fourteenth.  I can indulge in a pinch of snuff from the tabatiere of the Marquise de Rambouillet, hold my court-plaster in the boite a mouches of Ninon de l’Enclos, and cut ribands with the scissors of Madame de Deffand.

This desire of obtaining objects that have belonged to celebrated people may be, and often is, considered puerile; but confess to the weakness, and the contemplation of the little memorials I have named awakens recollections in my mind fraught with interest.

I can fancy Madame de Sevigne, who was as amiable as she was clever, and whose tenderness towards her daughter is demonstrated so naturally and touchingly in the letters she addressed to her, holding the flacon now mine to the nostrils of Madame de Grignan, in whose health she was always so much more interested than in her own.