of causeurs; Count Montalivet, the former minister of Louis Philippe, and by him, for a few days at the full of the season, a little old gentleman with a squeaky voice, M. Adolphe Thiers.  Next comes a group of ladies, the three daughters of the Hispano-Mexican duchess De Fernan-Nunez; all three looking exactly alike, tall and dark; all three of a height; all three invariably dressed in black, with lofty Tyrolese hats and cocks’ feathers; all three unmarried; all three marriageable, and worth Croesus only knows how many millions; all three invariably alone—­a fact which made old Madame Colaredo scream out of her window one day, “Tiens! voila les trois cent (sans) gardes!” Then follow Lord Rokeby, the most affable of lordships; Lord Portarlington; General Sir William Williams of Kars; Princess Kantacuzene, the last descendant of the imperial Byzantine house of that name; the ideally lovely Miss Amy Shaw of Boston; the three pretty Miss Warrens of New York; Madame Gavini de Campile, the wife of the prefect, a fine-looking dame gloriously arrayed in showy robes, whom half the society adored and the rest cordially hated; the duke de Mouchy, who married Anna Murat; the duke de Perigord-Talleyrand, who married an American; the duke de la Conquista, who derives his title from the conquest of Peru; the lovely countess Del Borgo; and the famous Italian beauty, Madame Bellotti, a Milanese lady, whose maiden name was Visconti, of that semi-royal house.  Theresa Bellotti’s beauty is of a grand style seen nowhere out of Italy.  Picture her to yourself as I once saw her at a masquerade at the prefecture.  Round her superb figure swept an ample robe of crimson velvet looped up with bands of gold.  Her bare arms, models worthy of the chisel of Canova, gleamed from the rich sables which lined the hanging sleeves of her dress.  Her hair, dark as night, was gathered up in the high fashion Sir Joshua Reynolds loved to depict.  A half-moon of enormous diamonds fastened a plume over her left temple, and her neck and fingers flashed back the colors of the rainbow from a thousand gems.  As to her face, it was radiant.  Rich color flushed her cheeks, her eyes sparkled with animation when she spoke; but at times, when her features resumed a calm after conversation, she resembled the portraits of some of the famous Italian women of the Renaissance—­her own ancestress, for instance, Bianca Visconti, duchess of Milan, or Veronica Cibo, or Lucrezia Petroni, whose daughter was the ill-fated Beatrice Cenci.  And now come by the fascinating Mrs. Lloyd, whom all the world knows and likes; grand-looking Mrs. Senator Grymes of Louisiana, a witty, brilliant old lady, whose salon is one of the most elegant in Nice; Baron Haussmann, and with him his colossal daughter, Madame de Perneti, the handsomest of giantesses, who was once asked to join in private theatricals, but when the stage was built up in her friend’s drawing-room, being about five feet from the level of the rest of