Who gave her that magnificent thing that she so loved? I wish I knew. How many times I saw her sunk deep in her bergère, one foot on that footrest, the hem of her gown hiked up halfway to her knee, picking up, putting down, then once again picking up the snuffbox on the little table between her box of lozenges and her fingerless silk gloves! Was she a coquette? Until the day she died she kept herself up as if that fine portrait had been painted only the day before, as if she were awaiting the cream of the court that forever gravitated around her. Looking at that bergère, I remembered the inimitable movement she gave to her skirts as she sank into it. Those women of bygone days carried off with them certain secrets that paint an entire picture of their age. The princess had a particular way of cocking her head, of casting a glance or tossing out a word, a whole private language that I never saw in my mother. There was a finesse about it, and a congeniality too, full of meaning but never posturing; her conversation was at once garrulous and laconic, she knew how to tell a story, and she could draw a portrait with three words.

Above all, she had an absolute freedom of opinion that must certainly have shaped my own turn of mind. From seven to ten years of age, I lived at her side. She loved having me in her rooms no less than I loved being there. That predilection was the cause of more than one quarrel between her and my mother, but nothing whips up the flames of fondness like the cold wind of persecution. How graciously she used to say “There you are, little mask!” when the serpent of curiosity lent me its undulations so that I might slip through her doors and go to her. She felt she was loved, she loved my naive adoration, which brought a ray of sunlight into her winter. I know not what went on in her rooms in the evening, but she had a great deal of company; tiptoeing into her drawing room the next morning to see if the day had begun there, I saw the furniture out of place, the gaming tables set up, piles of tobacco here and there. The style of that room is the same as the bedroom. The furniture is singularly turned, the wood decorated with concave moldings and hoof feet. Richly sculpted, wonderfully distinctive garlands of flowers wend their way between the mirrors and hang down in festoons. There are fine Chinese vases on the sideboards. All of this is set against walls of white and poppy red. My grandmother was a proud, piquant brunette, and her choice of colors gives an idea of her skin tone. I found in that drawing room a writing table set with tooled silver, whose forms greatly occupied my eye when I was small. It was given to her by a Lomellini of Genoa.[9] The four sides of that table represent the occupations of the four seasons; the characters are in relief, and there are hundreds in each scene. I spent two hours recapturing my memories, all alone in that sanctuary, which saw the last moments of one of the most remarkable women of Louis XV’s court, celebrated as much for her mind as for her beauty. You know how abruptly I was snatched away from her, from one day to the next, in 1816. “Go say goodbye to your grandmother,” my mother told me. I found the princess unsurprised at my going away, and outwardly impassive. She received me just as she usually did. “You are bound for the convent, my treasure,” she told me. “You will be with your aunt, an excellent woman. I shall see to it that you are not sacrificed, you will be independent and in a position to wed whomever you like.” She died six months later; she’d entrusted her will to the most faithful of her old friends, Prince de Talleyrand, who, while paying a call on Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf, had her convey to me that my grandmother forbade me to take my vows. I do hope that sooner or later I will meet that prince, who no doubt will have more to tell me.

And so, my doe, while I found no one to welcome me, I consoled myself with that beloved princess’s specter, and I looked forward to honoring one of our pacts, which is, you remember, to tell each other every detail of our new circumstances and surroundings. How comforting it is to know the life of an absent friend! Carefully paint for me every little thing around you, everything, even the light of the setting sun on the tall trees.

October 10

It was three o’clock when I arrived; at around half past five, Rose came to tell me that my mother was at home, and I went down to pay my respects.