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Show MR. AND MADAME DE LESSEPS. The whole of Europe passes through the dining-room and salon of Mr. and Madame de Lesseps. It is a hospitable house if ever there was one, cosmopolitan, and always seeming to be full of joy. You amuse yourself there as you do nowhere else, and at the same time you find there a family note in the shape of a joyous band of seven children who, at a given moment, make a noisy and bounding entry in the midst of the receptions. Mr. de Lesseps loves to be surrounded by this little world, and his young wife is an adorable mother. Every day, about four o'clock, an immense ? carries off the brood to the Bois de Boulogne. Who has not remarked those laughing faces, those rosy cheeks, and eyes sparkling with a youth that is blossoming forth in the full tide of happiness? Between the father and mother and their children there is a harmony of tenderness which is, perhaps, the most natural sentiment in the world, but which now-a-days is not common enough. Madame de Lesseps is of Creole origin; her beauty has the type of that race, the magnificent black eyes-eyes of black velvet, which prevent you from seeing with the impartiality any other feature of her face. The nose, perhaps is a little wanting in line. Yes, assuredly, but you hardly think of it in presence of that queenly look which commands all your admiration. And then she has a supremely elegant figure. Tight-fitting dresses were invented for her sake, and she is faithful to them. Doubtless this fashion would be eternal if all women had as good a right to conform to it as she has. She is the daughter of Mr. de Bragars, who was judge to the Mauritus. The following anecdote relative to her marriage with Mr. de Lesseps is known to their friends alone. It is charming. On his return from Palestine, Mr. de Bragars had brought back with him some roses ? Jericho for some ladies of his acquaintance. Mr. de Lesseps, who was one of the friends of the house, was present when the legend about these flowers was related. Any one who has some of these flowers was related. Any one who has some of these flowers dried may put them in water and express a wish; of his desire is to be fulfilled, the next day the faded flower will be found to have bloomed again. "And you, mademoiselle," said Mr. de Lesseps, turning toward the young daughter of Mr. de Bragars, "are you, too, going to try the experiment?" "It is useless, monsieur," the young girl replied, with melancholy and emotion. "Those roses would not bloom again!" "Why?" "Because the wish that I form cannot be realized." There was so much confusion and evident emotion in this reply that Mr. de Lesseps was struck and got to thinking. "Try, at least, mademoiselle," he said, taking her hand, which she did not withdraw too hastily. It appears that the young girl put the legend of the roses to the test. The following day they had resumed their colors, and shortly afterword Mde. De Bragars became Madame de Lesseps. Mr. de Lesseps lives in the Rue Saint Florentin. One of the most interesting pieces of furniture in the salon is a what-not containing the hundreds of decorations that have been given to Mr. de Lesseps. In all the rooms Oriental stuff are there, and costly bibelots abound. In the anti-chamber are two enormous elephants' tusks and a collection of umbrellas of all nations. Throughout the house there reigns comfort and elegance without orientation of luxury. The manners of the master and the mistress of the house are simple and affable. A small employs or an unknown journalist is received as graciously as an ambassador. Their receptions are very animated. On Madame de Lesseps' days you cannot hear anything; everybody is talking, moving about and amusing himself. As for hospitality it is practiced her in the old fashioned style. They have always at the house some relation who has not been favored by fortune, or who has need of recommendations, and these visitors stay six months or a year. Mr. de Lesseps is about seventy-seven years of age; his wife was twenty-one years old when he married her, in 1862. His activity is prodigious; he works, attends to the duties of his high situation, goes into society, takes his wife to balls, passes the night there, and resumes his busy life at day-dawn. When he is at Ismailia he refreshes himself by a sea-bath, and then he can very well dispense with going to bed. Every year he embarks for Egypt, with his whole family, just as he would go to Asnieres, and yet, heaven knows the number of trunks such a numerous family must require. Mr. de Lesseps has had a country house built at Meudon, on the model of an Egyptian house, with an interior court, on to which all the rooms open. There the legendary hospitality is practiced on the still larger scale. Everybody in Paris has seen the magnificent portrait that Bonnet painted of Mr. de Lesseps; the work is a little tumultuous and jerky, perhaps, but it depicts well the energy of the man. The following is a remarkable trait of his ? ?. On the eye of the opening of the Suez Canal, by the ex-empress and all the sovereign princes of the world, an engineer came in terror to tell Mr. de Lesseps that there was a rock jutting out, in an unseemly fashion, in the middle of the canal, and that there might, perhaps, be danger for the princely guests. Imagine the ex-empress wrecked in the middle of the canal! Mr. de Lesseps replied, simply, "I have said that we should pass, and we shall pass." The next day the passage was affected without accident. His activity and his will had got the better of the rock.-N.Y. Home Journal. |