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Honoré, in which are many most superb hôtels, amongst the rest, the British Ambassador's, formerly the Hôtel Borghèse, occupied by the Princess Pauline, sister of Bonaparte; the next hôtel is that of the Baroness Pontalba, and is one of the most splendid in Paris, which the visiter must not fail to remark.
It marked the erectness of his frame, the gayety of his mien, the dance of his locks. By her inner ear she heard his horse's tread passing up the narrow round-stone pavements of the Creole Quarter, presently to echo in old St. Peter Street under the windows of Pontalba Row one of which was Flora's.
Last evening, in the Rue Lepelletier, an attempt was made to assassinate the Emperor, by throwing grenades filled with fulminating mercury under the coach that bore the Imperial family to the Italian Opera. Count Felice Orsini, the murderer, himself desperately wounded, has been arrested, and Paris is crying for his blood. For several days I have been the honored guest of Madame Althie Pontalba.
M. Pontalba turned suddenly, and, drawing his chair close beside us, with an apology for the seeming intrusion, addressed the incipient skeptic: "Behind the iron bars of that dreariest of studies, a prison, a little weed once received the concentrated thought of a savant.
If he read between the lines of a memoir which Pontalba, a wealthy and well-informed resident of Louisiana, sent to him, he must have realized that this province, too, while it might become an inexhaustible source of wealth for France, might not be easy to hold.
Without in any way obstructing it, her pretty interest seemed to throw a halo around the dull routine of trade; and, if there was any unpleasantness, the arrival of Jean Palliot, coachman and ex-grenadier, with Madame Althie Pontalba, was sure to drive it away. Why will my heart, like a hungry thing, gloat on the happiness of others?
He has gone away in the midst of the holidays no one knows whither; and his sweet wife and pleasant home are as dreary as I. There is a mystery about this house which I have not yet unraveled. Marcel left in the morning, and M. Pontalba in the evening. That has been two weeks ago. I thought he would have fainted when I told him of the garçon's exodus.
O man, with the joy of your own young love, O woman blessed with a remembrance of earlier days, is it needful I should say, Madame Althie Pontalba is the Little Blue Veil? There were two visitors here an hour ago, a lady and a gentleman. Whatever their lack of ostentation, there was an air of distinction about both that would strike the most casual observer.
That, thanks to a fortunate warning, the Imperial coach was lined with boiler-iron, is well known. That warning, by direction of her husband, was written by Madame Althie Pontalba, and delivered by me.
In his memoir advising Bonaparte to take and hold Louisiana as an impenetrable barrier to Mexico, Pontalba had said with strong conviction: "It is the surest means of destroying forever the bold schemes with which several individuals in the United States never cease filling the newspapers, by designating Louisiana as the highroad to the conquest of Mexico."
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