We alighted at last at old Monceaux, and walked about its solemn alleys. Sometimes Miss Leare talked sense, and talked it well. Those were exciting days in Paris. It was February, 1848, and a great crisis was nearer at hand in politics than we suspected; besides which there had been several events in private life which had increased the general excitement of the period--notably the murder of Marshal Sebastiani's daughter, the poor duchesse de Praslin. Hermione could talk of these things with great spirit, but sometimes relapsed into her grown-up childishness. She talked, too, with animation of the freedom and happiness of her American girlhood. My sister Amy had always taken life _au grand sérieux_; Ellen was a little too prompt to flirt with officers and gay young men, and needed repression; Lætitia went in for book-learning, and measured every one by what she called their "educational opportunities." My sisters were as different as possible from this butterfly creature, who seemed to sip interest and amusement out of everything.
At the end of two hours we drove back to Mrs. Leare's hôtel, which was opposite our own apartment in the Rue Neuve de Berri, the hôtel that a few weeks later was occupied by Prince Jerome. Here Hermione insisted upon our coming in while the carriage drove to the dentist's for her mother.
The reception-rooms in Mrs. Leare's hôtel were very showy. They were filled with buhl and knick-knacks gathered on all parts of the Continent, and lavishly displayed, not always in good keeping. A little sister, Claribel, came running up to us when we entered, and clung fondly to Hermione, who sat down at the Erard grand piano and sang to us, without suggestion, a gay little French song. She was taking lessons, Amy afterward told me, of the master most in vogue in Paris and of all others the most expensive. Amy, who could sing well herself, disparaged Hermione's voice to me, and sighed as she thought of the waste of those inestimable lessons.
Then Miss Hermione lifted the top of an ormolu box on the chimney-piece of a boudoir and showed Amy and me, under the rose as it were, some cigarettes, with a laugh. "Mamma's," she said: "she has a _faiblesse_ that way."