' Wonderful power of description this!
Having had the honour of receiving an invitation to dinner at the
Elysee, Sir Francis of course goes at the appointed hour, seven
o'clock. The following is his account of the affair. After passing
through the entrance-hall, 'I slowly walked through two or three
handsome rooms _en suite_, full of interesting pictures, into a
drawing-room, in which I found assembled, in about equal proportions,
about fifty very well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, the latter being
principally officers, whose countenances, not less clearly than the
decorations on their breasts, announced them to be persons of
distinction. The long sofas and chairs, as if they had only just come
out--or rather, as if they had just come up from the country to come
out--had arranged themselves so very formally, and altogether behaved
so very awkwardly, that it was almost impossible for the company
assembled to appear as much at their ease as, from their position,
education, and manners, they really were; and accordingly, biassed by
the furniture, they kept moving, and bowing, and courtesying, and
_sotto-voce_ talking, until they got into a parallelogram, in the
centre of which stood, distinguished by a broad ribbon, and by a mild,
thoughtful, benevolent countenance, Prince Louis Napoleon, whose
gentle and gentleman-like bearing to every person who approached him
entitled him to that monarchical homage in which the majority
evidently delighted, but which it was alike his policy as well as his
inclination--at all events to appear--to suppress; and accordingly the
parallelogram, which, generally speaking, was at the point of
congelation, sometimes and of its own accord froze into the formality
of a court, and then all of a sudden appeared to recollect that the
Prince was the President, and that the whole party had assembled to
enjoy _liberte_, _fraternite_, and _egalite_.
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