Dear L.,—Social life here is very confusing and fatiguing; physically, because distances are so immense. People live everywhere, from the Île St.-Louis to the gates of St.-Cloud. Hardly a part of Paris where some one you know does not live. The very act of leaving a few cards takes a whole afternoon.
In reality there are three societies which make life for a diplomat, whose duty it is to be well with every one, very complicated and unending. The official season for dinners, receptions, and soirées is in the winter; French society, just returned from the Riviera and Italy, has its real season in spring, when Longchamps and Auteuil have races and Puteaux has its sports. The autumn is the time when strangers flock to Paris; then commence the restaurant and theater parties. How can any lady have a reception-day where people of all countries, all politics, and all societies meet? Impossible! I have tried it, and I am sorry to say that my receptions are dead failures. Still, I persevere, as I am told it is my duty to receive.
When our first invitation to the ball of the Élysées came I was most anxious to see what it would be like. Is it not strange that the cards of invitation are the same used in the Empire. "La Présidence de la République Française" stands instead of "La Maison de l'Empereur." I have the two before me, the old and the new, and they are exactly alike, color, paper, and engraving!
The Diplomatic Corps has a separate entrance at the Élysées. We were met and conducted by a master of ceremonies to the room where the President and Madame Faure were standing. M. Faure is called un Président décoratif. He is tall, handsome, and has what you might call princely manners. The privileged ones passed before them and shook hands, quite à l'Américaine. I was named by M, Crozier and got from M. Faure an extra squeeze by way of emphasizing that I was a new-comer.
We then passed into the salon where our colleagues were assembled, and did not move from there until the presidential pair came in at eleven o'clock. At these balls there are a great many—too many—people invited. I have been told that there are six thousand invitations sent out. To one gentleman is assigned the duty to stay in the first salon and pass in review the toilets of the promiscuous guests and judge if they are suitable. When he sees a lady (?) in a high woolen dress with thick and soiled boots in which she has probably walked to the ball, he politely tells her that there must be some mistake about her invitation, and she walks meekly back to her comptoir.
When M, and Madame Faure had finished receiving, they came into the room where the diplomats were; and the President, giving his arm to the lady highest in rank (the protocole arranged the other couples) we marched through the crowd of gazers-on, through the ballroom, where some youths and maidens were whirling in the dance, through the palm-filled winter garden, where the people were crowded around a buffet, and through all the salons until we reached the last one, quite at the end of the palace, where a sumptuous buffet awaited us. At one o'clock we returned home. It amused me to see old Waldteufel still wielding his bâton and playing his waltzes as of old. I wanted to speak to him, but, being in the procession, I could not stop.
Yesterday I had a visit from Adelina Patti. I had not seen her for a long time. It seemed only the other day that I had written a letter condoling with her on the death of Nicolini, her second husband. This time she was accompanied by her third husband, Baron Cederstrom, a very fine-looking Swede whose family we knew well in Sweden. The diva looked wonderfully young, and handsomer than ever. When they came into the salon together one could not have remarked very much difference in their ages, though he is many years younger than she is.
Massenet comes often to see me. He is a great man now. He and Saint-Saëns are the most famous musicians of France at the present moment. Massenet has never forgotten old kindnesses; and, no matter where he is, whether on a platform at a concert, or in a drawing-room full of people, he always plays as a prelude or an improvization the first bars of a favorite song of his I used to sing. He sends me a copy of everything he composes, and always writes the three bars of that song on the first page.
Among others we find our friend Marquise de Podesta. She is a sort of lady in waiting to Ex-Queen Isabella of Spain. I went to see her at the Queen's beautiful palace in the avenue Kléber. I was delighted when she asked me if I would like to make the acquaintance of the Queen. I went two days later to what she called an "audience." The Queen received me in a beautiful room lined with old Gobelin tapestry and furnished with great taste. She is rather heavy and stout and wears a quantity of brown hair plastered over her temples, which does not give her the height a Queen ought to have. She was very amiable, asked many questions about places and people I knew, and before I was aware of it I found myself spinning out lengthy tales. I should have much preferred she do the talking.
