The latter was not the only person who opened his drawing-rooms to the Viennese; others soon followed; fashionable Parisian society seemed for the time to have transferred its gay circle from Paris to Vienna; to make in the German imperial capital propaganda for the gay, intellectual, and brilliant circle of the imperial capital of France.

Beautiful women, distinguished by illustrious names, by wealth and charm, suddenly appeared in Vienna, opened their drawing-rooms, and seemed to make it their object to reconcile the hostile elements of French and German society, smooth away contrasts and bring them together.

Among these ladies whom the victory brought to Vienna, the beautiful Madame de Simonie was conspicuous as a brilliant and unusual person.  She was young, lovely, endowed with rare intellectual gifts, understood how to do the honors of her drawing-room with the most subtle tact, and was better suited than any one to act as mediator between the Viennese and the French, since she herself belonged to both nations.  A German by birth, she had married a Frenchman, lived several years in Paris with her husband, one of the richest bankers in the capital, and now, being widowed, had come to Vienna in order, as she said, to divert the minds of her countrymen from the great grief which the loss of their beloved capital caused them.

Beautiful Leonore de Simonie certainly appeared to be thoroughly in earnest in her purpose to divert their minds from their great grief.  Every evening her drawing-rooms were thrown open for the reception of guests; every evening all the generals, French courtiers, and people who belonged to good society in France were present; every evening more and more Germans and Viennese went to Madame de Simonie’s, until it seemed as if she afforded Viennese and Parisian society a place of meeting where, forgetting mutual aversion and hatred, they associated in love and harmony.

To be a visitor at Madame de Simonie’s therefore soon became a synonym of aristocracy in the new fashionable society of Vienna, which was composed of so many different elements.  The foreigners who had come to the Austrian capital, attracted by the renown of the French emperor, or led by selfishness, strove with special earnestness to obtain the entree to Madame de Simonie’s drawing-room, for there they were sure of meeting those whose acquaintance was profitable; by whose meditation they might hope to obtain access to the presence of the French emperor.

The day before Baroness Leonore had given a brilliant entertainment.  Until a late hour of the night all the windows of the story which she occupied in one of the palaces on the Graben were brightly lighted; the curious, characterless poor people had gathered in the street to watch the carriages roll up and away, and gaze at the windows whence the candles blazing in the chandeliers shone down upon them, and behind whose panes they saw in swift alternation so many gold-embroidered uniforms, so many showy ball dresses.