My father stopped at the door and took me in his arms to bring me up to the level of his face; he always did so when he had something serious to tell me.
"My child," he said, "while I was in Florence I read the story of a sculptor, who relates that when he was just about your age, he showed his father a salamander which was sporting in the fire; his father slapped his face and said, 'My son, that slap was not meant to punish you, but to make you remember that you have seen not only what few men of our generation have seen, but also what few men of your generation will see, namely, a salamander.' Very well, then! I will do the same as the father of the Florentine sculptor; only instead of a slap I will give you this piece of gold, to make you remember that you have been kissed by one of the best and one of the greatest ladies who have ever lived, Madame la marquise de Montesson, the widow of Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, who died just twenty years ago."
I do not know what effect on my memory a slap on the face from my father's hand might have had, but I know that that gentle reminder coupled with the gold coin engraved this scene so deeply on my memory that I can still at this date see myself seated by the gracious old lady, who played gently with my hair all the while she was talking to my father.
Madame la marquise de Montesson died on February the 6th, and my father on February the 26th, 1806.
So it was that I, who pen these lines in 1850 (for nearly three years have flown by since I began these Memoirs, abandoned the idea, then resumed the work again) saw Charlotte-Jeanne Béraud de le Haie de Riou, marquise of Montesson, widow of the regent's grandson.
And my father knew M. de Richelieu, who was placed in the Bastille by Louis XIV. for being found concealed under the bed of madame la duchesse de Bourgogne.
If you thus unite the recollections of two generations, the events of a century will seem to have only happened but yesterday.
My father and mother went to the play at night, and took me with them. It was at the Opéra Comique, and Paul and Virginia was being played, the two leading parts being taken by Méhu and Madame de Saint-Aubin.
In later years I hunted up good little Madame de Saint-Aubin, who would be about thirty-eight when I first saw her, and therefore now would be between eighty-two and eighty-three years of age, and I retailed to her every detail of that evening in the August of 1805: one of them was a matter personal to herself: Virginia was far advanced in pregnancy.
Poor Saint-Aubin could not remember anything about it.