We were engaged to Cuvier's in the evening, and went first to M. Jullien's, in the Rue de _l'Enfer_, not far from the Jardin des Plantes, and there we saw one of the most extraordinary of all the extraordinary persons we have seen--a Spaniard, squat, black-haired, black-browed, and black-eyed, with an infernal countenance, who has written the _History of the Inquisition_, and who related to us how he had been sent _en pénitence_ to a monastery by the Inquisition, and escaped by presenting a certain number of kilogrammes of good chocolate to the monks, who represented him as very penitent. But I dare not say more of this man, lest we should never get to Cuvier's, which, in truth, I thought we never should accomplish alive. Such streets! such turns! in the old, old parts of the city: lamps strung at great distances: a candle or two from high houses, making darkness visible: then bawling of coach or cart-men, "Ouais! ouais!" backing and scolding, for no two carriages could by any possibility pass in these narrow alleys. I was in a very bad way, as you may guess, but I let down the glasses, and sat as still as a frightened mouse: once I diverted Harriet by crying out, "Ah, mon _cher_ cocher, arrêtez;" like Madame de Barri's "Un moment, _Monsieur_ le Bourreau." It never was so bad with us that we could not laugh. At last we turned into a _porte-cochère_, under which the coachman bent literally double: total darkness: then suddenly trees, lamps, and buildings; and one, brighter than the rest by an open portal, illuminating large printed letters, "Collège de France."
Cuvier came down to the very carriage door to receive us, and handed us up narrow, difficult stairs into a smallish room, where were assembled many ladies and gentlemen of most distinguished names and talents. Prony, as like an honest water-dog as ever; Biot (_et moi aussi je suis père de famille_), a fat, double volume of himself--I could not see a trace of the young _père de famille_ we knew--round-faced, with a bald head and black ringlets, a fine-boned skull, on which the tortoise might fall without cracking it. When he began to converse, his superior ability was immediately apparent. Then Cuvier presented Prince Czartorinski, a Pole, and many compliments passed; and then we went to a table to look at Prince Maximilian de Neufchatel's _Journey to Brazil_, magnificently printed in Germany, and all tongues began to clatter, and it became wondrously agreeable; and behind me I heard English well spoken, and this was Mr. Trelawny, and I heard from him a panegyric on the Abbé Edgeworth, whom he knew well, and he was the person who took the first letter and news to the Duchesse d'Angoulême at Mittau, after she quitted France. She came out in the dead of the night in her nightgown to receive the letter.