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Book, page 71 / 248 altogether very like the Little Gibbon in Shaw's _Zoology_, only the Little Gibbon does not look as conceited as this man did. We are now, my dear Aunt Mary, in a magnificent hotel in the fine square, formerly Place Louis Quinze, afterwards Place de la Revolution, and now Place de la Concorde. Here the guillotine was once at work night and day; and here died Louis Seize, and Marie Antoinette, and Madame Roland: opposite to us is the Seine and _La Lanterne._ On one side of this square are the Champs Elysees. _To_ MRS. MARY SNEYD. PARIS, RUE DE LILLE, _Oct. 31, 1802._ I left off at the Hotel de Courlande. We were told there was a fine view of Paris from the leads; and so indeed there is, and the first object that struck us was the Telegraph at work! The first _voiture de remise_ (job-coach in plain English) into which we got, belonged to--whom do you think?--to the Princess Elizabeth. The Abbe Edgeworth had probably been in this very coach with her. The master of this house was one of the King's guards, a Swiss. Our apartments are all on one floor. The day after our arrival M. Delessert, he whom M. Pictet describes as a French Rumford, invited us to spend the evening with his mother and sister. We went: found an excellent house, a charming family, with whom we felt we were perfectly acquainted after we had been in the room with them for five minutes. Madame Delessert, [Footnote: The benevolence of the generous Madame Delessert is said to be depicted in one of the stories in Berquin's _Ami des Enfans._] the mother, an elderly lady of about sixty, has the species of politeness and conversation that my Aunt Ruxton has: I need not say how much I like her. Her daughter, Madame Gautier, has fine large black eyes, very obliging and sensible, well dressed, not at all naked: people need not be naked here unless they choose it. Rousseau's _Letters on Botany_ were written for this lady; he was a friend of the family. She has two fine children of eight and ten, to whose education she devotes her time and talents. Her second brother, Francois Delessert, about twenty, was educated chiefly by her, and does her great credit, and what is better for her, is extremely fond of her:
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