[Illustration:  THE PRINCESS BARBARA VASSILIEWNA GALITZIN.]

In a letter dated Paris, November 28, 1826, written by Mrs. Cooper to her sister, appears of Mr. Cooper:—­“They make quite a Lion of him and Princesses write to him and he has invitations from Lords and Ladies.  He has so many notes from the Princess Galitzin I should be absolutely jealous were it not that she is a Grandmother.  We were at a Soiree there the other evening among Dutchesses, Princesses, Countesses, etc.”

[Illustration:  LA GRANGE, COUNTRY HOME OF LAFAYETTE.]

[Illustration:  LA GRANGE ARCHWAY ENTRANCE.]

Once with and twice without Mrs. Cooper, the author visited La Grange, the country home of General Lafayette, some twenty-seven miles from Paris and near Rosay.  He tells us that La Grange means barn, granary, or farm, and that the chateau came to Lafayette through his wife; that it had some five hundred acres of wood, pasture, meadow, and cultivated land; that the house is of hewn stone, good grayish color, with its five plain, round towers and their high, pyramidal slate roofs making a part of the walls; that the end towers are buried in ivy planted by Charles Fox.  He tells how small, irregular windows open beautifully through the thick foliage for the blooming faces of children, in their home-part of La Grange.  He gives rare pictures of the great stairway, the General’s bed-room, cabinet, and library in the tower-angle overlooking the willow-shaded moat.  Beneath this library was the author’s own bed-room.  Then came the array of drawing-rooms and innumerable other rooms, where hospitality seemed to know no limit.  Lafayette’s cabinet contained many portraits,—­one of Madame de Stael, and one of his own father.  Of this room, and the library, and his grand old host Cooper wrote:  “I passed much of our visit alone with him in these two rooms.  No one can be pleasanter in private, and he is full of historical anecdotes that he tells with great simplicity and frequently with great humor.”  The chateau stands on three sides of an irregular square, and is one of the most picturesque structures in the country.  The winding road enters a thicket of evergreens, crosses a bridge, and passes beneath an arch to the paved court.  Together, Cooper and his host had many walks and drives thereabouts, and, all in all, the author fell under the spell of Lafayette’s personal charm and his simple integrity of character.  Between Lafayette’s richness of years and Talleyrand’s old age there was a gulf,—­one had attained nearly everything worth striving for; the other had lost the same.

[Illustration:  HOTEL DESSEIN, CALAIS, FRANCE.]