The big political dinners were always interesting. On one occasion we
had a banquet on the 2d of December. My left-hand neighbour, a senator,
said to me casually: "This room looks very different from what it did
the last time I was in it." "Does it? I should have thought a big
official dinner at the Foreign Office would have been precisely the same
under any regime." "A dinner perhaps, but on that occasion we were not
precisely dining. I and a number of my friends had just been arrested,
and we were waiting here in this room strictly guarded, until it was
decided what should be done with us." Then I remembered that it was the
2d of December, the anniversary of Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat. He said
they were quite unprepared for it, in spite of warnings. He was sent out
of the country for a little while, but I don't think his exile was a
very terrible one.

I got my first lesson in diplomatic politeness from Lord Lyons, then
British ambassador in Paris. He was in Paris during the Franco-German
War, knew everybody, and had a great position. He gave very handsome
dinners, liked his guests to be punctual, was very punctual himself,
always arrived on the stroke of eight when he dined with us. We had an
Annamite mission to dine one night and had invited almost all the
ambassadors and ministers to meet them. There had been a stormy sitting
at the Chamber and W. was late. As soon as I was ready I went to his
library and waited for him; I couldn't go down and receive a foreign
mission without him. We were quite seven or eight minutes late and found
all the company assembled (except the Annamites, who were waiting with
their interpreter in another room to make their entry in proper style).
As I shook hands with Lord Lyons (who was doyen of the diplomatic corps)
he said to me: "Ah, Madame Waddington, I see the Republic is becoming
very royal; you don't receive your guests any more, merely come into the
room when all the company is assembled." He said it quite smilingly, but