it.  In 1870 she gave one at the Grand Hotel, to which half the town was invited.  There arrived at the festal scene about five hundred men and just thirty-two women.  It was funny enough.  The thirty-two women besported themselves with thirty-two partners in the centre of the hall to the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and all kinds of musical instruments, whilst the rest of the men stood round the hall five deep, like a deep dark fringe on a Turkish carpet.  Madame Rattazzi, however, achieved a great triumph against all odds.  By dint of grace, charm of manners and tact she put all her guests in the best humor.  The “thirty-two” had a fine time of it, and danced to their hearts’ content.  The five hundred men were introduced and grouped and wined and punched until every man there swore that earth did not hold a fairer or more genial hostess.  Madame Rattazzi was “supported,” as the phrase goes, on this memorable occasion by Madame la Princesse, her mother, a rather formidable-looking dowager, a daughter of Lucian Bonaparte, and widow of Sir Thomas Wyse, once British consul at Athens.  Her Imperial Highness Princess Letitia must have been a wonderful beauty in her youth—­a stately grand being who one could easily imagine might have resembled the Roman Agrippina or empress Livia.  Once the barrier of her stately manners overcome, she proved to be a talkative, affable woman of the world, with a huge experience thereof.  I can see her now, dressed in a scarlet satin robe and glittering with jewels.  She wore a headdress of diamonds with two long ostrich feathers in it, one of which, a white one, got out of its place and stood bolt upright, as if it was frightened, until some charitable hand laid it down.  This was, I fancy, the last ball Princess Letitia ever graced, for she died a very little while afterward.  Poor Rattazzi was there too.  He was not a striking-looking man, but agreeable and excessively polite.  He rarely talked politics—­I rather suspect from the fear of compromising himself—­but his conversation was was pleasant and varied.  After his death Madame Rattazzi removed to Monaco, where she busied herself with editing his letters and memoirs—­a task which, it appears, the Italian government would be delighted that she should spare herself, as his papers are said to be very full of compromising matter relative to the Mentana expedition.  A large sum of money was offered her to relinquish her hold on these documents, but she answered by a letter published in the Italian papers that they were left to her as a sacred trust, and that she felt herself in duty bound to make their contents public, in order to justify her husband’s memory.  As a curious proof of her political sagacity—­unless it is to be considered a mere coincidence—­I may mention that in January, 1870, she came to a masked ball at the Casino dressed as Mars, in a short skirt of red satin, a cuirass of gold, on her head a helmet, in one hand a spear, and in the other a shield, and on it was written “Roma.”  Did Madame Rattazzi foresee that by September of the same year there would be a war, and that as one of its results Rome would so soon become the capital of that Italy which her husband had helped to build up?[003]