Adams Papers

19th.

19th.

Dined at the Swedish Ambassadors:1 the Company was not very numerous: a number of Sweeds, one, who lately came from America: the Ambassador said to me: mon dieu que Mlle. vôtre soeur est jolie! j’ai vu peu d’aussi jolies femmes qu’elle: he thought doubtless, that I should tell her what he said: he is a very agreeable man. The Gentleman lately from America, professes to be charmed with the Country: especially with NewPort in Rhode Island: he admired the Ladies very much. We had a very elegant dinner, served entirely in silver, but it was not so splendid, as I have seen at the same table: the generality of the foreign Ambassadors here live in a great degree of magnificence: the Sweedish Ambassador pays nine thousand livres a year for his house without an article of furtinure in it. Mr. Brantzen, one of the Dutch Ambassadors gives for his house, all furnished eighteen thousand livres per an: and I have heard him boast of his having it very cheap. Count d’Aranda, the Spanish Ambassador gives twenty eight thousand livres every year for his house: every thing else must be in proportion; the same Count d’Aranda has sixty persons in his service, and spends doubtless more than ten thousand pound sterling annually. No Ambassador at this Court spends less, I am persuaded, than 6,000 sterling.

1Erik Magnus, Baron Staël-Holstein, minister plenipotentiary and ambassador extraordinary to France, 1783–1796, 1798–1799 (Repertorium der diplomatischen Vertreter aller Länder description begins Repertorium der diplomatischen Vertreter aller Lander seit dent Westfalischen Frieden (1648), ed. Ludwig Bittner and others, Oldenburg, &c, 1936-1965; 3 vols. description ends , p. 408).

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