After nine years of gaiety in the gayest city in the world came the war of
1870 and the Commune. Upon the fall of the Empire, Mrs. Moulton returned
to America, where Mr. Moulton died, and a few years afterward she married
M. de Hegermann-Lindencrone, at that time Danish Minister to the United
States, and later successively his country's representative at Stockholm,
Rome, and Paris.

Few persons of her day have known so many of those whom the world has
counted great. Among her friends have been not only the ruling monarchs of
several countries, and the most distinguished men and women of their
courts, but almost all the really important figures in the world of music
of the past half-century, among them Wagner, Liszt, Auber, Gounod, and
Rossini. And of many of these great men the letters give us glimpses of
the most fascinatingly intimate sort.




IN THE COURTS OF MEMORY


CAMBRIDGE, _1856._

DEAR M.,--You say in your last letter, "Do tell me something about your
school." If I only had the time, I could write volumes about my school,
and especially about my teachers.

To begin with, Professor Agassiz gives us lectures on zooelogy, geology,
and all other ologies, and draws pictures on the blackboard of trilobites
and different fossils, which is very amusing. We call him "Father Nature,"