On the return to Paris from Germany several places were tried before finding a short distance across the Seine, No. 59 rue St. Dominique,—­an off-and-on home for three years.  Here the salon was thirty feet long and lofty—­to a sailor’s delight, seventeen feet; above the doors were paintings in gilded frames; and there were four large mirrors, and vast windows reaching to the floor.  The dining-room, even larger, opened on the garden.  After this manner the doctor of the Duke of Orleans built his home for himself—­and this American tenant.  The turmoil in this city of light at once attracted him in the near view of the Revolution of July.  Having known General Lafayette since 1824, these two fine men were brought in close touch on Cooper’s second visit to Paris.  In 1831 the Marquis Lafayette was the center of American life here, and consequently he and our author were constantly and intimately thrown together.

[Illustration:  LAFAYETTE’S PARIS HOME, RUE D’ANJOU.]

Lafayette’s neat, simple apartment in a hotel of some pretension was in the rue d’Anjou.  There were a large antechamber, two salons, and an inner room, where he wrote, and finally had his bed.  His town servants were his German valet, Bastien, who served during the last visit to America, a footman, and a coachman.  Cooper wrote:  “When I show myself at the door Bastien makes a signal of assent, intimates that the general is at dinner; but I am at once ushered into the bed-room.  Here I find Lafayette at table—­so small as to be covered with a napkin, his little white dog his only companion.”  It was understood that the guest had dined, so he takes a seat in the chimney-corner, and as they talk the dinner goes on to its finish of dates, which are shared by the visitor.  The last of these pleasant visits grew from the usual half hour to almost two, as they chatted of the great and small and all in their fine way.  Lafayette thought Louis Philippe “the falsest man” he ever met.  Of Charles X he “spoke kindly,” giving him “an exactly opposite character,” and Marie Antoinette he believed “an injured woman.”

[Illustration:  GENERAL LAFAYETTE’S BED-ROOM.]

[Illustration:  LOUIS PHILIPPE.]

[Illustration:  GENERAL LAFAYETTE.]

When Mr. McLane, our minister to England, made a flight to Paris in 1830, Lafayette strongly urged Cooper to give him the pleasure of presenting him with Mr. McLane to Louis Philippe at a Palais Royal “evening.”  Concerning the event Cooper noted:  “Though such a visit was contrary to my quiet habits, I could do nothing but comply.”  His book on France relates the event and concludes with:  “We all got invitations to dine at the palace in a day or two.”  But Cooper “never had any faith in the republican king,” and thought “General Lafayette had been the dupe of his own good faith and kind feelings.”  Queen Marie Amelie, who was the daughter of Ferdinand I of the two Sicilies, asked Cooper which he most preferred of all the lands he had visited.  His quick and strictly truthful reply was:  “That in which your majesty was born for its nature, and that in which your majesty reigns for its society.”  As the “evening” was for men Cooper noticed that “the queen and her ladies wore bonnets.”