with one or two members making long speeches about purely local matters, which didn’t interest any one.  We looked down upon an almost empty hall on those occasions.  A great many of the members had gone out and were talking in the lobbies; those who remained were talking in groups, writing letters, walking about the hall, quite unconscious apparently of the speaker at the tribune.  I couldn’t understand how the man could go on talking to empty benches, but W. told me he was quite indifferent to the attention of his colleagues,—­his speech was for his electors and would appear the next day in the Journal Officiel.  I remember one man talked for hours about “allumettes chimiques.”

Leon Say was a delightful speaker, so easy, always finding exactly the word he wanted.  It hardly seemed a speech when he was at the tribune, more like a causerie, though he told very plain truths sometimes to the peuple souverain.  He was essentially French, or rather Parisian, knew everybody, and was au courant of all that went on politically and socially, and had a certain blague, that eminently French quality which is very difficult to explain.  He was a hard worker, and told me once that what rested him most after a long day was to go to a small boulevard theatre or to read a rather lively yellowbacked novel.

I never heard Gambetta speak, which I always regretted—­in fact knew very little of him.  He was not a ladies’ man, though he had some devoted women friends, and was always surrounded by a circle of political men whenever he appeared in public. (In all French parties, immediately after dinner, the men all congregate together to talk to each other,—­never to the women,—­so unless you happen to find yourself seated next to some well-known man, you never really have a chance of talking to him.) Gambetta didn’t go out much, and as by some curious chance he was never next to me at dinner, I never had any opportunity of talking to him.  He was not one of W.’s friends, nor an habitue of the house.  His appearance was against him—­dark, heavy-looking, with an enormous head.

When I had had enough of the speeches and the bad atmosphere, I used to wander about the terraces and gardens.  How many beautiful sunsets I have seen from the top of the terrace or else standing on the three famous pink marble steps (so well known to all lovers of poetry through Alfred de Musset’s beautiful verses, “Trois Marches Roses"), seeing in imagination all the brilliant crowd of courtiers and fair women that used to people those wonderful gardens in the old days of Versailles!  I went sometimes to the “Reservoirs” for a cup of tea, and very often found other women who had also driven out to get their husbands.  We occasionally brought back friends who preferred the quiet cool drive through the Park of St. Cloud to the crowd and dust of the railway.  The Count de St. Vallier (who was not yet senator, but deeply interested in politics) was frequently at Versailles and came back with us