the respective characters, that all minor details were driven out of the minds of her attentive listeners. At the conclusion Her Majesty warmly complimented Rachel on her exquisite performance. In the course of the evening I had the pleasure of being introduced to this great artiste, and conducted her to the refreshment room. That and a formal visit I paid her in London, were the only opportunities I had of conversing with her. During these brief interviews, I found her most amiable and spirituelle to the greatest degree.
It was after this wonderful evening that the Queen, as a testimony of her admiration and goodwill, presented Rachel with a bracelet, composed of two wreathed serpents with diamond heads; while graven on the inside was the simple inscription, "À Rachel, Victoria Reine."
Dr. Véron, "the Bourgeois de Paris," in his amusing Reminiscences of Rachel, from which we have already given extracts, tells a story that shows us the curious contrasts of Rachel's nature, and lets us see what a Bohemian she remained, in spite of the adulation and splendour amid which she now moved. On her return from Windsor, the day after the evening described above, she entered the sitting-room of the lodging where she and her family lived, and, throwing herself into an arm-chair, said, with a sigh, "Ah, je suis fatiguée. J'ai besoin de m'encanailler."
On another occasion during her visit to England, he tells us, "she quarrelled with me. I contradicted her; I heard her utter the word 'canaille.' We were reconciled; I complained. 'You complain, do you?' she said, laughing; 'why it is from this moment only that you belong to the family.'" And yet, he adds a little further on, in a tone of tender regret, had I written these Reminiscences in 1838, I would have had the greatest difficulty in restraining, even before the public, the frantic admiration I felt for the young
