St. Aulaire is Ambassador at Vienna, and, however clever, he either wants presence of mind or is touchy, as the following anecdote shows. Madame de Metternich is a fine handsome woman, ill brought up, impertinent, _insouciante_, and _assez bourrue_--_au reste_, quick and amusing. She went to a ball at St. Aulaire's with a fine coronet of diamonds on, and when he came to receive her he said, 'Mon dieu, madame, quelle belle couronne vous avez sur la tête!' 'Au moins,' said she, 'ce n'est par une couronne que j'ai volée.' Instead of turning it into a joke, he made a serious affair of it, and went the next day to Metternich with a formal complaint; but Metternich said, 'Mais mon cher, que voulez-vous? Vous voyez que j'ai épousé une femme sans éducation; je ne puis pas l'empêcher de dire de pareilles sottises, mais vous sentez bien que ce serait fort inconvénant pour moi de m'en mêler. Allons! il n'y faut plus penser,' and so turned it off, and turned him out, by insisting on making a joke of the affair, as St. Aulaire had better have done at first.
Just as might have been expected, the Conservative candidates in the City are defeated by an enormous majority. Pattison, the Governor of the Bank, the Liberal candidate who came in second on the poll, having been proposed by Jones Loyd,[2] the richest banker in the City, and perhaps the richest man in Europe.[3] Such outward demonstrations as these unquestionably afford a very plausible answer to the opposite cry, and the victory on the Radical side is great and important. Ward told me they should at least run them hard, so that the disappointment must be grievous; still it is asserted that the greatest part of the wealth of the City will be found in the columns of the address--but then the votes are in the other scale. The elections, as far as they have gone, are rather against the Government, but not showing any material difference in numbers--sufficient, however, to prove that, in point of fact, Peel's declarations have produced little or no effect, and that the various considerations that have been urged on the country and the appeals to its reason have been all alike thrown away.
[2] [Mr. Jones Loyd, afterwards created Lord Overstone.]