CHAPTER XIV
The French Embassy welcomed me in the most charming way, and I retain the best remembrances of the moments spent in its salons. The Russians considered the Bompards bourgeois after the Montebellos, who had lived there en grands seigneurs, spending their large fortune, and dipping into it also a little. The Russians would have liked France to send them a marquis, a duke, a prince—considering that more flattering—but at least a "handle." And, as the people who made this remark to me were considered to have advanced ideas, I answered: "But that is democracy; what else do you make of it?" Upon which there was silence.
One evening Madame Bompard told us as a great secret that we must all say how we liked the quality of the tea served that evening, for it had been sent her by the Chinese Minister, who would be there. We therefore all exclaimed on the merits of the liquid—very pale, very scentless, very insipid—which was served to us; the most perfect mixture possible, as it appears, and into which is introduced a great quantity of rose leaves. And the little yellow man was all smiles, swinging more
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