Three performances were arranged for the afternoon.  To the right was a Japanese theater where Sadi-Jako and her troupe played their repertoire.  In the center was a Grecian temple, before which a ballet of pretty girls danced on the grass in Grecian dresses.  The effect was charming.  To the left was a little Renaissance theater where people of different nationalities danced and sang in their national costumes.  I never saw anything so wonderfully complete.  Only the French can do things like that.  When the moment arrived for the official promenade, you may imagine how I felt when I saw Monsieur Loubet approach me and offer me his arm.  After all, I was the first lady!  Why was I not dressed in my best?

Monsieur and I walked at the head of the procession.  We made the tour of the gardens and through the whole palace, gazed on and stared at by the entire crowd of the twelve thousand spectators, until at last we reached the salon where the buffet was established.

PARIS, 1902.

Dear L.,—­You might think that we are nearly exhausted, but health and energy seem to assert themselves, and we bob up like those weighted playthings children have.  We have turned heads-up from our journey to Denmark.  We celebrated our silver wedding at Aalholm.  I won’t bother you with the usual phrase, “How the time has flown!” Twenty-five years!  You have seen what an ordinary wedding in Denmark is like.  You can coat this one with silver, and then you will but know half the excitement.  The setting being Aalholm, the chief actors J. and I, the chorus being family and friends, you may imagine that this fete left nothing to be desired.  Guests came from everywhere to the number of forty.  Even our best man came from Norway.  Deputations and telegrams dropped on us by the hundreds; presents of silver in every form and shape.  My dress was silver, and silver sprays in my hair, and J. wore them in his buttonhole.  The dinner arranged by Frederick on viking lines was splendid.  Speeches at every change of plates.  I wept tears of pathos.  An address of five hundred names, adorned with water-color sketches of our different Legations, bearing a silver cover and a coat of arms, was presented by the Danish colony in Paris.  It was all very touching and gratifying.

The famous beauty, Countess Castiglione, departed this world a few days ago.  She was the woman most talked of in the sixties.

When I first saw her she was already passee.  There is nothing that has not been said about her, but of this I know absolutely very little.  She used to live in Passy, and was called “La recluse du passe.”  She was so extraordinarily dressed and always created a sensation.

For the last thirty years no notice had been taken of her.  I quote the Figaro: 

“Countess Castiglione in her day was considered the most beautiful woman living.  A classical beauty, but entirely without charm.  For the last years she has lived, after having arrived at the age of eighty, in a dismal apartment in the Place Vendome, friendless, forgotten, and neglected.”