The little courtyard of the hotel could not contain more than the carriages; the horsemen were obliged to stay in the very narrow rue Daunou, which they filled from one end to the other.

While the two gentlemen were exchanging their greetings I slipped out and walked down the rue de la Paix, which I found barred from the rue Daunou as far as the rue de Rivoli.

I felt very proud when I thought from whom it was barred.

I went into a shop while the brilliant cortege was passing and, feigning ignorance, asked the woman at the counter: 

“What is this procession?”

“Oh!  C’est un de ces diplomates” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

I left the shop without buying anything—­a paltry revenge on my part; still it was a revenge.

We have found a suitable apartment in the rue Pierre Charron, and I have just now begun to look up some of my old friends.  Alas! there are not many left, but those who are seem glad to see me.  My first official visit was to Madame Faure.  This was easily managed.  I simply went on one of her reception-days.  An Elysian master of ceremonies was waiting for me, and I followed him into the salon where Madame Faure sat, surrounded by numerous ladies.  A servant wrestled in vain with my name, “Crone” being the only thing he seized, but the master of ceremonies announced to the President that I was the Danish Minister’s wife, after which things went smoothly.  To leave no doubt in the other guests’ minds that I was a person of distinction and the wife of a Minister Madame Faure asked me innumerable questions about Monsieur le Ministre.

We were scarcely settled when there came the awful catastrophe of the burning of the Bazar de Charite, about which you have probably read.  I had promised to go to it, and I can say that my life literally hung on a thread, for if my couturiere had kept her word and sent my dress home at the time she promised I should certainly have gone and would probably have been burned up with the others.  Marquise de Gallifet also owed her life to my not going.  She came to make me a visit and lingered a little.  This little saved her life.  She entered the fated bazar just a moment before the fire broke out, and therefore managed to escape.

Frederikke and I drove to the offending dressmaker. (How I blessed her afterward!) When we passed the Cours la Reine we were very much astonished to see a man without a hat, very red in the face, waving two blackened hands in the most excited manner.  He jumped into a cab and drove away as fast as the horse could gallop.  Then we saw a young lady, bareheaded, in a light dress, rushing through the street, and another lady leaning up against the wall as if fainting.  The air was filled with the smell of burning tar and straw, and we noticed some black smoke behind the houses.  I thought it must come from a stable burning in the neighborhood.  We had been so short a time in Paris that I did not realize how near we were to the street where the bazar was held.