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His humour and good-humour are really delightful; he is, as Madame de Vinde says, the most harmless good creature that ever existed; and he has had sense enough to stick to science and keep clear of politics, always pleading "qu'il n'etait bon qu'a cela." He accompanied us in our morning excursions to Malmaison and St. Germain.
When it grows duskish we all migrate at a signal from Madame de Vinde, "Allons, nous passerons chez M. de Vinde;" so we all cross the billiard-room and dining-room, and strike off by an odd passage into M. de Vinde's study, where, almost in the fire, we sit round a small table playing a game called Loto, with different-coloured pegs and collars for these pegs, and whoever knows the game of Loto will understand what it is, and those who have never heard of it must wait till I come home to make them understand it.
"Why, I have been heated a little, and amusing myself with sundry vain imaginings, but allow me to take wine with you, Captain," filling a tumbler with vinde grave to the brim, as I spoke.
De almindelige norröne dragekampe lige fra Sigurds drab på Fåvne har stadig til mål at vinde dragens guld. For Sivard digre eksisterer dette motiv ikke; han vil frelse de hjemsögte mennesker. Af alle de islandske dragekampe har kun Björn Hitdölekæmpes noget tilsvarende, og her er det næppe tilfældigt at også den er henlagt til de engelske farvande.
M. de Leuze, who translated the Botanic Garden as well as it could be translated into Fenelon prose; and M. and Madame de Vinde, who have a superb gallery of paintings, and the best concerts in Paris, and a library of eighteen thousand volumes well counted and well arranged; and what charms me more than either the books or the pictures, a little grand-daughter of three years old, very like my sweet Fanny, with stockings exactly the same as those Aunt Mary knitted for her, and listing shoes precisely like what Fanny used to wear: she sat on my knee, and caressed me with her soft, warm little hands, and looked at me with her smiling intelligent eyes.
I fell to work with Madame Cuvier, with whom I knew he was acquainted, and he met us at breakfast at Cuvier's; and I asked Prony if M. and Madame de Vinde would allow me to ask the Count to come here; and so yesterday Prony came to dinner, and the Count at dessert, and he ate cold cutlets and good salad, and all was right; and whenever any of our family go to Vienna, he gave me and mine, or yours, a most pressing invitation thither which will never be any trouble to him.
M. and Madame de Vinde are exactly what you remember them; and her grand-daughter, Beatrice, the little girl you may remember, is as kind to Fanny and Harriet as M. and Madame de Vinde were to their sister. Mr. Hutton wrote to me about a certain Count Brennar, a German or Hungarian talents, youth, fortune assuring me that this transcendental Count had a great desire to be acquainted with us.
In the evening we were at a fete de village at La Celle, to which Madame de Vinde had invited us, as like an Irish pattern as possible, allowing for the difference of dress and manner. The scene was in a beautiful grove on each side of a romantic road leading through a valley.
But to go on with the history of our day. After coffee, Madame de Vinde sits down at a round table in the middle of the room, and out of a work-basket, which is just the shape of an antediluvian work-basket of mine, made of orange-paper and pasteboard, which lived long in the garret, she takes her tapestry work: a chair-cover of which she works the little blue flowers, and M. Morel de Vinde, pair de France, ancien Conseiller de Parlement, etc., does the ground!
He has had a cold, and wears a black silk handkerchief on his head and a hat over it in the house; three waistcoats, two coats, and a spencer over all. Madame de Vinde and I talk, and the young people play billiards.
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