The Marquis de Noailles is the French Ambassador.  You recollect him and the Marquise, who were in Washington the first year we were there.  He, as you know, is of the bluest blood of France.  She is of Polish extraction and lived in Paris, where she had a succes de beaute in the Napoleonic days.  After her first husband’s death (Count Schwieskoska) she married de Noailles.  They have an offspring, an enfant terrible, if there ever was one, who is about nine years old, and a worse torment never existed.  Nobody on earth has the slightest control over him—­neither father, mother, nor tutor.  The Marquis makes excuses for his bringing-up by saying that, having had a very severe, rod-using father himself, he was determined that if he ever had a child he would spare the rod.  He can flatter himself that he has thoroughly succeeded in spoiling the child.

When we were at a very large and official dinner at the Farnese Palace (the French Embassy), where the beautifully decorated tables filled the whole length of the Carracci Gallery, the guests were amazed as seeing Doudou (the name of the infant) come in on a velocipede and ride round and round the table, all the servants dodging about to avoid collision, holding their platters high in the air, for fear of being tripped up and spilling the food.  The astonished guests expected every moment to have their chairs knocked from under them.  This made this should-be-magnificent dinner into a sort of circus.  No persuasion or threats could induce this terrible child to go away, and he continued during the dinner to do his velocipede exercises.  He must be a very trying boy.  His mother told me herself that he forces both her and his father to take castor or any other oil when the doctor prescribes it for him.  People tell horrible stories about him.  I am sure you will say what every one else says—­“Why don’t his parents give him a good spanking?”

At a small dinner at the English Embassy I met the celebrated tenor, Mario.  I had not seen him since in Paris in 1868, when he was singing with Alboni and Patti in “Rigoletto.”  Alboni once invited the Duke and the Duchess of Newcastle, Mr. Tom Hohler, and ourselves to dinner to meet Mario in her cozy apartment in the Avenue Kleber.  I was perfectly fascinated by Mario and thought him the beau ideal of a Lothario.  His voice was melodious and caressante, as the French say, and altogether his manners were those of a charmer.  It was a most interesting dinner, and I was all ears, not wanting to lose a word of what Alboni and he said.  What they talked about most was their many reminiscences, and almost each of their phrases commenced, “Vous rappelez vous?” and then came the reminiscence.  After fourteen years I meet him here, a grandpapa, traveling with his daughter.  He is now the Marquis di Candia (having resumed his title), et l’homme du monde parfait; he is seventy years old and has a gray and rather scanty beard instead of the smooth, carefully trimmed brown one of autrefois.  Why do captivating and fascinating creatures, such as he was, ever grow old?  But, as Auber used to say, “the only way to become old is to live a long time.”