Observing Lady Blessington’s faultless equipage standing at the door of the Cosmorama, I went in and saw her Ladyship for a moment. She said she was suffering from recent illness, but I thought her looking far better than when I was last in England. Her two beautiful nieces were with her, and Lord ——; and the celebrated Vidocq (for this was what they had come to see,) was showing them the disguises he had worn in his wonderful detections of criminals, the weapons he had taken from them, and all the curiosities of his career—himself the greatest. I looked at the Prince of Policemen with no little interest of course, after reading his singular memoirs. He is a fat man, very like the outline of Louis Phillippe’s figure, and his head, enormously developed in the perceptive organs, goes up so small to the top, as to resemble the pear with which the King of the French is commonly caricatured. Vidocq’s bow to me when I came in was the model of elegant and respectful suavity, but I could not repress a feeling of repugnance to him, nevertheless.
I made a couple of calls before I went home. The chief topic of conversation at both houses was the charms and eccentricities of an American belle who had lately married into a noble family. She seems to have enchanted the exclusives by treating them with the most un-deferential freedom. A few evenings since, she chanced to be surrounded by a half-dozen high bred admirers, and conversation going rather heavily, she proposed a cock-fight. Dividing the party into two sides, she tied the legs of the young men together, and set them to a game of fisticuffs—ending in a very fair representation of an action between belligerent roosters! One of her expressions was narrated with great glee. She chanced to have occasion to sneeze when sitting at dinner between two venerable noblemen. “La!” she exclaimed, “I hope I didn’t splash either of you!” I have mentioned only the drolleries of what I heard. Several instances of her readiness and wit were given, and as those who mentioned them were of the class she is shining in, their admiring tone gave a fair reflection of how she is looked upon—as the most celebrated belle and notability of high life for the present season.