Gambetta must have been a curious contrast
to the Duc de Morny.
We went to see a first function at the Elysee some time in February, two
Cardinals were to be named and Grevy was to deliver the birettas.
Mollard asked to see me one morning, telling me that the two ablegates
with their suite had arrived, and wished to pay their respects to me.
One of them was Monsignor Cataldi, whom we had known well in Rome when
we were living there. He was a friend of my brother (General Rufus King,
the last United States minister to the Vatican under Pia Nono), and came
often to the house. He was much excited when he found out that Madame
Waddington was the Mary King he had known so well in Rome. He had with
him an English priest, whose name, curiously enough, was English. They
appeared about tea-time and were quite charming, Cataldi just as fat and
cheerful and talkative as I remembered him in the old days in Rome. We
plunged at once into all sorts of memories of old times--the good old
times when Rome was small and black and interesting--something quite
apart and different from any other place in the world.
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