Thus arrayed, within an hour he complacently followed the note and his
floral offering. The house he sought had been once the residence of
a foreign Ambassador, who had loyally represented his government in a
single unimportant treaty, now forgotten, and in various receptions and
dinners, still actively remembered by occasional visits to its salon;
now the average dreary American parlor. "Dear me," the fascinating Mr. X
would say, "but do you know, love, in this very room I remember meeting
the distinguished Marquis of Monte Pio;" or perhaps the fashionable
Jones of the State Department instantly crushed the decayed friend he
was perfunctorily visiting by saying, "'Pon my soul, YOU here;--why, the
last time I was in this room I gossiped for an hour with the Countess
de Castenet in that very corner." For, with the recall of the aforesaid
Ambassador, the mansion had become a boarding-place, kept by the wife of
a departmental clerk.
Perhaps there was nothing in the history of the house more quaint and
philosophic than the story of its present occupant.
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