In The Evening Mr. And Mrs. S. C. Hall Called.
They Are Admirably Matched - He Artist, She Author.
The one writes
stories, the other illustrates them.
Madame M. also called. English by
birth, she is a true _Parisienne,_ or, rather, seems to have both
minds, as she speaks both languages, perfectly. Her husband being a
learned Oriental scholar, she, like some other women enjoying similar
privileges, has picked up a deal of information, which she tosses
about in conversation, in a gay, piquant manner, much as a kitten
plays with a pin ball.
Madame remembers Mesdames Recamier and De Stael, and told me several
funny anecdotes of the former. Madame R., she said, was always
coquetting with her own funeral; conversed with different artists on
the arrangements of its details, and tempting now one, now another,
with the brilliant hope of the "composition" of the scene. Madame M.
offered me her services as _cicerone_ to Paris, and so to-day out
we went - first to the Pantheon, of which, in her gay and piquant
style, she gave me the history.
Begun first in the time of Louis XVI. as a church, in the revolution
its destination was altered, and it was to be a temple to the manes of
great men, and accordingly Rousseau, Voltaire, and many more are
buried here. Well, after the revolution, the Bourbons said it should
not be a temple for great men, it should be a church. The next popular
upset tipped it back to the great men again; and it staid under their
jurisdiction until Louis Napoleon, who is very pious, restored it to
the church.
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