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Franklin, to the Marquis Lafayette. "Passy, Aug. 24, 1779. "The Congress, sensible of your merit towards the United States, but unable adequately to reward it, determined to present you with a sword, as a small mark of their grateful acknowledgments. They directed it to be ornamented with suitable devices.
Another disappointment," muttered the Englishman as the lady went back to the ball. A few minutes later Graham joined Lemercier, who was talking with De Passy and De Breze. "Well," said Lemercier, when his eye rested on Graham, "I hit the right nail on the head this time, eh?" Graham shook his head. "What! is she not the right Louise Duval?" "Certainly not."
Over Passy, about half a mile from the starting point, the balloon began to descend, and the River Seine seemed rising to engulf them; but when they fed the fire under their sack of hot air with chopped straw they rose to the elevation of five hundred feet. Safe across the river they dampened the fire with a sponge and made a gentle descent beyond the old ramparts of Paris.
The life led in the little house at Passy, silent and shut off from the outer world, was a very regular one, with no more noise about it than the faint tic-tac of an old-fashioned timepiece. Two antiquated domestics, a cook and a manservant, who had been with the family for forty years, alone glided in their slippers about the deserted rooms, like a couple of ghosts.
"Don't you like those villas? I love them, and their comfort is secure; its root is in the earth, the only thing we are sure of. There is more pagan of life and sentiment in France than elsewhere. Would you not like to have a Passy villa? Would you not like to live here?" "One of these days I may buy one, then you shall come to breakfast, and I'll give you an omelette and a beefsteak.
"The thought came to me that the love of liberty had lifted many of us above the human plane of sordid striving. "Solomon came into camp that evening. He was so glad to see me that he could only wring my hand and utter exclamations. "'How is the gal? he asked presently. "I told him of our meeting in Passy and of my fear that we should not meet again.
The most insistent memory of my life in Passy at the Hôtel Féminine is the Battle of the Somme. After it commenced in July I heard the great guns day and night for a week. That deep, steady, portentous booming had begun to exert a morbid fascination before the advance carried the cannon out of my range, and I had an almost irresistible desire to pack up and follow it.
Another friend, Mons. de P, offered his country house, but, for the same reason, this offer was declined. We arrived at Passy about ten o'clock at night, and though a deporte, I slept tolerably well. Before I was up, my friend Mons. de P. was with me breakfasted with us in our little oven of a parlour conversed two hours most agreeably.
Nevertheless, he ended by saying, 'That's enough. You had better come in out of the wet. You can sleep in my rooms. But at this the girl became even more frightened, and threw up her arms. 'In your rooms? Oh! good heavens. No, no; it's impossible. I beseech you, monsieur, take me to Passy. Let me beg of you. But Claude became angry.
He had been some time ill, and four of the greatest physicians in Europe were his almost constant attendants. The funeral of "The Swan of Pesaro," as he was called by his compatriots, was attended by an immense concourse, and his remains rest in Père-Lachaise. Moscheles, the celebrated pianist, gives us some charming pictures of Rossini in his home at Passy, in his diary of 1860.
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