It is a very high mind to which gratitude is not a painful sensation.

If you wish to please, you will find it wiser to receive--solicit even--favours, than accord them; for the vanity of the obliger is always flattered--that of the obligee rarely.
Well, this is an unforeseen digression: let me return! I had mixed, of late, very little with the English.

My mother's introductions had procured me the entree of the best French houses; and to them, therefore, my evenings were usually devoted.

Alas! that was a happy time, when my carriage used to await me at the door of the Rocher de Cancale, and then whirl me to a succession of visits, varying in their degree and nature as the whim prompted: now to the brilliant soirees of Madame De--, or to the appartemens au troisieme of some less celebrated daughter of dissipation and ecarte;--now to the literary conversaziones of the Duchesse de D--s, or the Vicomte d'A--, and then to the feverish excitement of the gambling house.

Passing from each with the appetite for amusement kept alive by variety; finding in none a disappointment, and in every one a welcome; full of the health which supports, and the youth which colours all excess or excitation, I drained, with an unsparing lip, whatever that enchanting metropolis could afford.
I have hitherto said but little of the Duchesse de Perpignan; I think it necessary now to give some account of that personage.