It Is Simply Understood That On Such An Evening, The Season Through, A Lady _Receives_ Her Friends.

All come that please, without ceremony.

A little table is set out with tea and a plate of cake. Behind it presides some fairy Emma or Elizabeth, dispensing tea and talk, bonbons and bon-mots, with equal grace. The guests enter, chat, walk about, spend as much time, or as little, as they choose, and retire. They come when they please, and go when they please, and there is no notice taken of entree or exit, no time wasted in formal greetings and leave takings.

Up to this hour we had conversed little in French. One is naturally diffident at first; for if one musters courage to commence a conversation with propriety, the problem is how to escape a Scylla in the second and a Charybdis in the third sentence. Said one of our fair entertainers, "When I first began I would think of some sentence till I could say it without stopping, and courageously deliver myself to some guest or acquaintance." But it was like pulling the string of a shower bath. Delighted at my correct sentence, and supposing me _au fait_, they poured upon me such a deluge of French that I held my breath in dismay. Considering, however, that nothing is to be gained by half-way measures, I resolved upon a desperate game. Launching in, I talked away right and left, up hill and down, - jumping over genders, cases, nouns, and adjectives, floundering through swamps and morasses, in a perfect steeple chase of words. Thanks to the proverbial politeness of my friends, I came off covered with glory; the more mistakes I made the more complacent they grew.

Nothing can surpass the ease, facility, and genial freedom of these _soirees_. Conceive of our excellent professor of Arabic and Sanscrit, Count M. fairly cornered by three wicked fairies, and laughing at their stories and swift witticisms till the tears roll down his cheeks. Behold yonder tall and scarred veteran, an old soldier of Napoleon, capitulating now before the witchery of genius and wit. Here the noble Russian exile forgets his sorrows in those smiles that, unlike the aurora, warm while they dazzle. And our celebrated composer is discomposed easily by alert and nimble-footed mischief. And our professor of Greek and Hebrew roots is rooted to the ground with astonishment at finding himself put through all the moods and tenses of fun in a twinkling. Ah, culpable sirens, if the pangs ye have inflicted were reckoned up unto you, - the heart aches and side aches, - how could ye repose o' nights?

Saturday, June 11. Versailles! When I have written that one word I have said all. I ought to stop. Description is out of the question. Describe nine miles of painting! Describe visions of splendor and gorgeousness that cannot be examined in months! Suffice it to say that we walked from hall to hall until there was no more soul left within us.

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