suggested to the Empress that I should sing for them. It was a delightful
evening, and I enjoyed myself and my little triumph immensely. I made the
acquaintance of the Austrian ambassador and the Princess Metternich. She
seemed very pleasant, and put me directly at my ease. She is far from
being handsome, but dresses better than any woman in Paris, and has more
_chic_. In fact, she sets the fashion as much as the Empress does.

The Emperor, at the instigation of the Duke de Morny, has given orders for
the construction of a bridge over the Marne near Petit Val, a thing we
needed greatly. When you were here, if you remember, one had to walk from
the station to the river, about a little quarter of a mile. Once there you
had to wave and shout for the ferryman, who, before allowing you to get on
the boat, would attend to what cattle or merchandise were waiting there
for transport. I do not think the bridge would have been built had not the
Duke de Morny come out by train to Petit Val to avoid the long drive of
twelve miles from Paris, and had been bored by this primitive means of
transporting his august person. He said he was astonished and mortified
that such a state of things should exist so near Paris. So was every one
else. Otherwise the "bac" would have gone on forever.

The Carnival has never been so whirlwindy as it has been this year; and I
don't know how the purses of our lords and masters are going to hold out;
and while the poor, "whom we have always with us," are getting rich, the
rich, whom we don't always have, alas! are getting poor. For the private
fancy-dress ball at the Tuileries last Monday, to which the guests were
invited by the Empress, Worth alone made costumes to the tune of two
hundred thousand dollars, and yet there were not four hundred ladies
invited.

To begin at the top, the Empress was dressed as the wife of a doge of