March 21 and March 22 Saturday – Sam was working hard most evenings on A Tramp Abroad. But on Mardigras at 10 PM Sam went with Moncure Conway and General Edward Noyes to a reception for Jules Grévy, the newly elected president of France. They looked in on some fancy balls. Robert R. Hitt, first secretary of the American legation at Paris, drove Sam and Conway in a carriage to the New Opera House at 11:30 PM. They “waited outside till the doors opened at midnight” and once inside were in a “vaste horde of maskers.”

Sam’s notebook lists guests at Grevy’s reception: Leon Gambetta, president of the Chamber of Deputies; Prince Chlodwic of Hohenlohe-Schillings-fürst, German ambassador to France; and William H. Waddington, the French minister of foreign affairs, along with “the brother of Grevy’s mistress.”

“At 1 a.m. left the Opera & went to a mask ball at the American circus, to another at the Tivoli—to the Opera till 4 a.m. then saw wind-up dance at another mask ball & got home at 5 or 5.30” [MTNJ 2: 299-300].