I recollect it was on St. Patrick's Day. My lovely friend had procured,
from the gardens of the Empress Josephine, at Malmaison (whom we loved
a thousand times more than her Austrian successor, a sandy-haired
woman, between ourselves, with an odious squint), a quantity of shamrock
wherewith to garnish the hotel, and all the Irish in Paris were invited
to the national festival.
I and Prince Talleyrand danced a double hornpipe with Pauline Bonaparte
and Madame de Stael; Marshal Soult went down a couple of sets with
Madame Recamier; and Robespierre's widow--an excellent, gentle creature,
quite unlike her husband--stood up with the Austrian ambassador.
Besides, the famous artists Baron Gros, David and Nicholas Poussin, and
Canova, who was in town making a statue of the Emperor for Leo X., and,
in a word, all the celebrities of Paris--as my gifted countrywoman, the
wild Irish girl, calls them--were assembled in the Marquis's elegant
receiving-rooms.
At last a great outcry was raised for La Gigue Irlandaise! La Gigue
Irlandaise! a dance which had made a fureur amongst the Parisians ever
since the lovely Blanche Sarsfield had danced it. She stepped forward
and took me for a partner, and amidst the bravoes of the crowd, in
which stood Ney, Murat, Lannes, the Prince of Wagram, and the Austrian
ambassador, we showed to the beau monde of the French capital, I flatter
myself, a not unfavorable specimen of the dance of our country.
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