[3] Perhaps the reader of the above will partake our own feeling of
surprise at one circumstance which it records. How happened it, that
the accomplished lady of a Parisian salon could not shield her chief
guest, and all her guests, from the impertinence of one among them? To
us this seems incomprehensible, and excites our suspicion that Mme de
Staël could not have been among those mistresses of the science of
tact, of whom elsewhere Mme Gay speaks. The whole charm of the evening
was here allowed to be spoiled.