on it.” I felt the surprise that one feels on opening the Correspondence of that Duchesse d’Orléans who was by birth a Princess Palatine. And indeed Princesse Mathilde, animated by sentiments so entirely French, expressed them with a straightforward bluntness that recalled the Germany of an older generation, and was inherited, doubtless, from her Wurtemberg mother. This somewhat rude and almost masculine frankness she softened, as soon as she began to smile, with an Italian languor. And the whole person was clothed in a dress so typically “Second Empire” that⁠—for all that the Princess wore it simply and solely, no doubt, from attachment to the fashions that she had loved when she was young⁠—she seemed to have deliberately planned to avoid the slightest discrepancy in historic colour, and to be satisfying the expectations of those who looked to her to evoke the memory of another age. I whispered to Swann to ask her whether she had known Musset. “Very slightly, sir,” was the answer, given in a tone which seemed to feign annoyance at the question, and of course it was by way of a joke that she called Swann “Sir,” since they were intimate friends. “I had him to dine once. I had invited him for seven o’clock. At half-past seven, as he had not appeared, we sat down to dinner.