his burly presence appeared his jokes and witty sallies and his stories
provoked loud and inexhaustible shouts of laughter. All children love
cheery people. There was another diplomat whose arrival we always looked
forward to, the Bailli de Ferrette, Minister of the Grand Duke of Baden-
-and this for two reasons. First of all because of that title of
"Bailli," which seemed to belong to another world, or at all events to a
harlequinade, and then on account of the extraordinary appearance of the
man--he looked like a skeleton in powder. We were quite ignorant in
those days, it is needless to remark, of the fact that this cool,
proper-looking Bailli was a great musician, a first-class performer of
the STABAT MATER, whose inspiration however depended on his having the
shoulders, very DECOLLETEE ones too, of a charming nightingale, over
whom the Opera and Opera-Comique fought for many a day, as the desk he
laid his music on. Sometimes when the evening was half over a bell was
heard like the one in the fourth act of the HUGUENOTS. "There's the big
bell," we would cry. It was the signal that Madame la Dauphine or Madame
la Duchesse de Berri was coming to pay us a visit, and my father would
tear off, with all of us after him, to receive the visitor on the
staircase. But our season at the Palais-Royal closed with the winter,
and the first fine days saw us migrate to Neuilly, to the general
delight.

Neuilly! I can never write the word without feeling moved, for it is
bound up with all the happiest memories of my childhood, and I salute
that name with respect akin to that which I would show a dead man! Those
who never knew the Neuilly of which I would speak must imagine to
themselves a very large country house, of no architectural pretension,
consisting almost exclusively of sets of ground-floor rooms, tacked one
on to the other on much the same level, with delightful gardens, and
standing in the middle of a very large park which stretched from the