book I have read in five or six years; but, for all that, it is all

merely fancy. There is no depth, no solidity, no common-sense; he is a man who becomes intoxicated with his own words, and who no longer takes the trouble to think.

The twentieth volume of Thiers pleases me, as it does you. There was, to my mind, a tremendous difficulty to be met in extracting anything tangible from the immense medley of conversations of Sainte Helena reported by Las Casas, and in this Thiers has succeeded marvellously. I like, also, his views of Napoleon and his comparison of him with other great men. He is a little severe on Alexander and on Caesar; yet there is much truth in what he says of the absence of virtue on the part of Caesar. Here, everybody is intensely interested in the book, and I fear there is far too much affection for the hero; for instance, they are unwilling to admit the truth of the anecdote of Nicomedes; nor you either, I fancy.

Good-bye, dear friend. Take good care of yourself, and do not sacrifice yourself too much for others, because it will become a habit with you, and that which you do to-day with pleasure you may be obliged some day to do with pain. Good-bye again.

CCLVI

PARIS, _October 23, 1862_.

DEAR FRIEND: I have had an exciting time since the beginning of the month; this is the reason for my delay in answering your letter. I returned from Biarritz with the sovereigns. We were all in a doleful state, having been poisoned, I think, with verdigris. The cooks swear that they scoured their utensils, but I do not believe in their protestations. The fact is that fourteen persons at the villa were seized with vomiting and cramps. I have been poisoned before with verdigris, so that I know the symptoms of it, and persist in my opinion.

I remained in Paris a few days, running about and attending to business matters, and then went to Marseilles, to the christening of the China steam-packets. You understand that this ceremony required my presence. These boats are so beautiful, and have such comfortable little state-rooms, that they give you the desire to go to China. I resisted, however, and contented myself by taking a sun-bath at Marseilles.

You have divined, perhaps, the meaning of my reference to the turmoil in which I was engaged on my return from Biarritz--political affairs, if you please. I was divided between my wish to see M. Fould remain in the ministry, in the interest of the Master, and my wish to see him resign, in the interest of his dignity, and in his own interest. The result has been concessions which have benefited no one, and which seem to me to have been degrading to everybody concerned.

The most absurd part of the business has been that Persigny, whom none of the ministers, with the exception of the papists, can endure, has become their standard-bearer, and his retention has been made a condition of holding their portfolios. Thus, Thouvenel, an excellent and intelligent fellow, has been dismissed, and Persigny, who is a fool and who has no understanding of affairs, retained. Now we are in the clutches of the clericals for no one knows how long, and you know how they treat their friends.

You seem to me to be too much affected by Victor Hugo’s speech. It is words without ideas; somewhat in prose like _Les Orientales_. To attune yourself to good prose, I commend you to read one of Madame de Sévigné’s letters, and, if you still have a taste for common-sense and ideas, read the twentieth volume of Thiers, which is the best of all. I have read it twice, the second time with more pleasure than the first, and I do not say that I shall not read it once more.

I should like to know something of your plans. I will tell you my own. I expect to go to Compiègne towards the 8th of next month, and remain there until after the Empress’s fête--that is, until the 18th or 20th. Before or after that time, may I not see you? It seems to me that the country must be very cold and damp at this season, and that you should think of returning....

Good-bye, dear friend. I hope you are still in good appetite and health.

CCLVII

PARIS, _November 5, 1862_.

DEAR FRIEND: I am invited to Compiègne until the 18th. I shall be in Paris the 10th, until three o’clock, and hope to see you. Write to me and tell me a great deal about yourself. I disapprove strongly of your new literary taste. I am now reading a book which might, however, interest you; it is the history of the revolt of the Netherlands, by Motley. I will send it to you, if you wish. There are no less than five thick volumes; and while not specially well written, it reads easily, and interests me no little. He has much anticatholic and antimonarchical partiality; but his researches have been extensive, and although an American, he is a man of talent.

I have taken cold, and have pain in my lungs. You will hear some day that I have ceased to breathe for lack of this organ. This should make you treat me with great kindness, before the arrival of such a misfortune. Good-bye, dear friend....

CCLVIII

CANNES, _December 5, 1862_.

DEAR FRIEND: I arrived here between two deluges, and for four days I thought there was no longer any sun even at Cannes. When it once begins to rain in this land, it is no joke. The fields between Cannes and the Estérel were transformed into a lake, and it was impossible to stick one’s head out of doors. Still, in the midst of this down-pour the air was mild and agreeable to breathe. Since I became asthmatic, I have been as sensitive in the matter of air as the Romans are respecting water.

That condition of affairs, fortunately, did not last long. The sun reappeared radiant three days ago, and since then, I have kept my windows open all the time, and am almost too warm. It is only the flies which remind me of the vexations of life.

Before leaving Paris, I consulted a celebrated doctor, for since my return from Compiègne I believed myself to be in a very serious state, and I wanted to know how soon I should have to arrange for my funeral. I am pleased enough with having consulted him, in the first place, because he assured me that this ceremony would not take place as soon as I had feared; in the second place, because he explained to me, anatomically, and with perfect clearness, the cause of my illness. I supposed my heart was affected; not so at all; it is my lung. It is true that I shall never be cured, but there are means by which I may be spared suffering; which is a great deal, if not the principal consideration.

You can form no idea of the beauty of the country after all these rains. May roses are in bloom everywhere; jasmines are beginning to bloom, as also quantities of wild flowers, each more beautiful than the others. I should like to take a course in botany with you in the neighbouring woods; you would see whether they are not equal to those at Bellevue.

I have received, I know not from whom, the last book of M. Gustave Flaubert, the author of _Madame Bovary_, which you have read, I fancy, although you will not admit that you have. I suppose he had talent, which he was squandering under the pretext of realism. He has just perpetrated a new novel, called _Salammbô_. In any other place than Cannes, particularly, where there was nothing to read but _La Cuisinière Bourgeoise_, I should not have opened this volume. It is a story of Carthage several years before the Second Punic War. By reading Bouillet and some other works of the same class, the author has acquired a sort of false erudition, and he accompanies this with a lyricism imitated from the very worst of Victor Hugo’s. There are passages which will please you, doubtless, since, like all persons of your sex, you like magniloquence. As for me, I detest it, and it has made me furious.

Since I have been here, and especially since the rain, I have continued my Cossack article. It will take long, I fear, to finish. I shall send soon to Paris a second instalment, and there will be more to follow. I discover that I forgot to bring with me a map of Poland, and I am embarrassed in writing Polish names, of which I have only the Russian translation. If you have within your reach some means of ascertaining it, will you endeavour to find out if a city which in Russian is called Lwow, is not perhaps the same as Lemberg in Galicia? You will be doing me a great service.

Good-bye, dear friend, I hope winter is not using you too severely, and that you are taking care to avoid colds. Is your little niece still amiable? Do not spoil her, so that she will store up future unhappiness for herself.

I wish you would go to see the comedy of my friend M. Augier, and that you would give me your candid opinion of it. Good-bye once more.

CCLIX

CANNES, _January 3, 1863_.

DEAR FRIEND: I began the year badly enough, in my bed, with a very painful attack of lumbago, which did not allow me even the privilege of turning over. This is what you get in these beautiful climates, where, so long as the sun is above the horizon, you imagine that it is summer, but where immediately after sunset comes a quarter of an hour of damp chilliness that penetrates to the very marrow of your bones. It is precisely as in Rome, with the difference that here it is rheumatism, and there fever, against which one must guard. To-day my back has regained some of its elasticity, and I have begun to walk.

I have had a visit from my old friend M. Ellice, who spent twenty-four hours with me and renewed my stock of news, and my ideas, which had become strikingly shrivelled by my sojourn in Provence. Everything considered, this is the only inconvenience of living away from Paris. One soon comes to be a log when one does not share the tastes of my friend, M. de Laprade, who would like to be an oak. This transformation has in it nothing agreeable.

If I continue to improve I think of returning to Paris on the 18th or 20th, to hear the discussion of the address, which they tell me will be warm and interesting. After having paid my respects, I shall come back to the sunshine; for if I had to endure the sleets and winds and mud of Paris in February, I should assuredly kick the bucket....

You are wrong not to read _Salammbô_. It is perfectly mad, it is true, and it contains even more of anguish and more of abominations than the _Vie de Chmielnicki_; but, after all, it has talent, and one gains an amusing idea of the author, and one even more droll of his admirers, the bourgeois, who wish to discuss affairs with honest folk. It is these same bourgeois whom my friend, M. Augier, has ridiculed so well. I am assured that no one with any self-respect will confess that he has been to see _Le Fils de Giboyer_. For all that, the cash-box of the theatre, and the purse of the author are filled to overflowing.

I recommend you to read in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of the 15th, a novel by M. de Tourguenieff, the proofs of which I am expecting here, and which I have read in Russian. It is called _Fathers and Sons_, and its theme is the contrast of the past generation with that of the present. The hero of the story is the representative of the rising generation, a socialist, materialist, and realist, but a man, nevertheless, who is intelligent and interesting. He is a singular character, and would please you, I hope. This novel has produced a tremendous sensation in Russia, and there has been a strong outcry against the author, who has been accused of impiety and immorality. When a work excites thus the furious invective of the public, it is, in my opinion, a sufficient proof of its success.

I think I shall have to make you read again the second part of _Chmielnicki_, the proofs of which I corrected while I was ill on my back. You will see in the book an enormous quantity of Cossacks impaled, and Jews burned alive.

I shall be in Paris, not to hear the address of the crown, but only the discussion of the address--that is, I suppose, about the 20th or the 21st; still, if it were more convenient for your personal plans, I might hasten my arrival.

Good-bye, dear friend. I wish you health and happiness, and no lumbago. Good-bye. Do not forget me.

CCLX

CANNES, _January 28, 1863_.

DEAR FRIEND: I was preparing to start for Paris, and expected to be there the 20th, when I was seized with another attack of my spasms of the stomach. I had a terrible cold, with most distressing choking, and kept my bed for a week. The physician told me that if I were to return to Paris before being entirely cured I should certainly have a relapse, which would be more serious than my present illness, so I shall remain where I am for another fortnight. I understand, besides, that the discussion of the address will be uninteresting, and that everything will pass quietly and quickly.

At present I am pretty well, a little weakly still, but I am beginning to go out again and to lead my usual life. The weather is admirable: this climate, however, is somewhat treacherous, and less than any one else I should allow myself to be deceived by it. So long as the sun is above the horizon one would suppose it was June; five minutes after sunset, however, arises a penetrating dampness. It is from admiring the beautiful sunsets too long that I have been ill.

They tell me that you have had no severe cold, but fog and rain. Around about us an incredible amount of snow has fallen, and nothing is lovelier at this time than the sight of the mountains all white with snow, surrounding our little green oasis.

How have you spent your time? Have you escaped catching cold and what sort of a life are you leading? I devote my evenings to writing for the _Journal des Savants_. That beast of a _Chmielnicki_ is not yet dead, and will cost me, I fear, two more articles still before I can write his funeral oration. I have already written two as long as the one you read, and as abundant in impalements, flayings, and other pleasantries of the kind. I am apprehensive lest it is too much like _Salammbô_. You must tell me your candid opinion, if you come across this rare _Journal des Savants_, which the ignorant persist in neglecting to read in spite of its worth.

We have had a tragedy in our neighbourhood. A pretty English girl was burned fatally at a ball. Her mother, in trying to rescue her, was burned also. Both died in three or four days. The husband, who was burned also, is still ill. This is the eighteenth woman of my acquaintance to whom this has happened. Why do you wear crinoline? You should set an example. It is only necessary to turn around before the chimney-place, or to look at one’s self in the mirror (there is one always above the fireplace), to be roasted alive. It is true that one dies but once, and that it is a great source of satisfaction to exhibit a monstrous bustle, as if any one could be deceived by a balloon full of air! Why do you not have a metallic curtain before your chimney-place?

It seems that they are becoming more religious in Paris. I receive sermons from people from whom I should have expected something quite different. I am told that M. de Persigny came out as an ultra-papist in the committee of the Address to the Senate. Well and good, I do not believe there has ever been a period in the history of the world when it was more stupid than it is in this age. All this will last while it may, but the end is a little terrifying. Good-bye, dear friend.

CCLXI

PARIS, _April 26, 1863_.

DEAR FRIEND: As I was not counting on your travelling tortoise fashion, I did not write to you at Genoa. I am addressing this letter to Florence, where I hope that you will stop for a time. Of all the cities of Italy that I know, it has best retained its characteristics of the Middle Ages. Only be careful not to catch cold, if you stay on the Lung’ Arno, as all respectable people do.

As for Rome, it has been so long since I was there that I am unable to advise you about it. I shall offer you suggestions only on the two following points: first, do not be out in the air at twilight, because you might easily catch the fever. A quarter of an hour before the Angelus you should go to Saint Peter’s, and wait there until the peculiar dampness which arises just at that time should have passed. There is nothing, moreover, more beautiful as a place of reverie than this great church at the fall of day. In the dimness, when all is seen indistinctly, it is truly sublime. Think of me there.

My second suggestion is, if you should have a rainy day, employ it by visiting the Catacombs. While you are there, go into one of the small corridors opening on the subterranean streets, extinguish your candle, and remain alone there three or four minutes. You must tell me the sensations which you felt. It would be a pleasure to me to make the experiment with you, but then you would not feel, perhaps, the same emotions.

It has never happened to me to see in Rome what I had intended to see, because one is attracted on every street-corner by something unexpected, and it is a great pleasure to yield one’s self to that sensation. I advise you, also, not to devote too much time to visiting palaces, which are for the most part overestimated.

Pay special attention to the frescos, regarding them from an artistic standpoint, and to views of nature blended with art. I commend to you the view of Rome and of its surroundings seen from Saint Peter’s in Montorio. You will see there, also, a very beautiful fresco of the Vatican. Be sure to see at the Capitol the Wolf of the Republic, which bears the trace of the lightning which struck it in the time of Cicero. It is not a thing of yesterday.

Make up your mind that you will not be able to see the hundredth part of what you wish to see, in the short time that you can devote to your journey, but you need have few regrets on that score. There will remain with you a memory of the whole, which is far better than a lot of petty memories of details.

I am feeling infinitely better, and regret your departure. I will say to you, however, and to your sister, that you have done well to take advantage of the opportunity to see Rome. There remains only the question of damages due me, which I pray you to keep in mind; I hope you will sometimes think of this.

There is not a beautiful place which I have seen, where I have not regretted my inability to associate you with it in my memory.

Good-bye, dear friend. Let me hear from you often, a few lines only; enjoy yourself, and come back in good condition. When I know that you are in Rome I shall give you some commissions. Good-bye again.

CCLXII

PARIS, _May 20, 1863_.

DEAR FRIEND: I am writing to you with an abominable grippe. For two weeks I have coughed instead of sleeping, and I have frequent attacks of choking. The only remedy is to take laudanum, and this gives me headache and stomach-ache, which are as distressing as the cough and the choking. In short, I feel weak and _avvilito_, and I am going to the dogs, my health and myself.

I hope it is not the same with you. I believe I have cautioned you to guard against the dampness accompanying the sunset in the country where you are now. Take care never to get cold, even if you should be too warm. I envy you for being in that beautiful land, where one feels a melancholy that is sweet and agreeable, which he recalls afterwards with an emotion of pleasure: but to make the comparison better, I wish you would go to Naples for a week. Of all transitions, it is the most abrupt and the most amusing that I know. It has, moreover, the advantage of comedy after tragedy; one falls asleep with his head full of comical thoughts.

I do not know whether the science of cooking has made any advancement in the states of the Holy Father. In my time it was the abomination of desolation, while in Naples one managed to subsist. It is possible that the political revolutions have laid equally low the cookery of both Rome and Naples, and that, epicure as you are, you will find them both bad.

We are thriving here on the experiences which have happened, or have been ascribed to Madame de ----. What is certain is that she is crazy enough to be bound. She beats her servants, she slaps and strikes people, and makes love to several fast fellows at the same time. She pushes her Anglomania to the point of drinking brandy and water--that is to say, a great deal more of the former than the latter.

The other evening she introduced her foppish lover to President Troplong, by saying, “Monsieur le President, I present to you my darling.” M. Troplong replied that he was happy to make the acquaintance of M. Darling. If what I hear of the reigning society women of this year is true, it is to be feared that the end of the world is at hand. I dare not tell you all that is done in Paris among the young representatives of the rising generation!

I hoped that you would relate some incidents of your journey, or at least that you would share your impressions with me. It is always a pleasure for me to know how things appear to you. Do not forget to look at the statue of Pompey, which is probably the one at the base of which Caesar was assassinated; and if you discover the shop of a man named Cades, who sells imitation antiques and pottery, buy me an intaglio of some beautiful stone. If you should go through Civita Vecchia, go to a curio merchant named Bucci, give him my regards, and thank him for the plaster cast of Beyle which he sent me. You can purchase from him for a song black Etruscan vases, engraved gems, and other things of the kind. You can decorate your mantel charmingly with those black vases.

Good-bye, dear friend. Keep well, and think sometimes of me.

CCLXIII

PARIS, _Friday, June 12, 1863_.

DEAR FRIEND: I learn with great pleasure of your return to France, and with even greater pleasure of your intention to be in Paris soon. It seems to me that the trouble you took to be coquettish in order to work that unfortunate Bucci was truly extraordinary. If I had given you a letter of introduction to him, according to my intention, you might have carried away his whole shop, without the necessity of resorting to the process of wheedling so habitual to you. Indeed, he is a fine man to have retained an affection for Beyle, whose only resource he was during his exile at Civita Vecchia. It would have been better to have induced him to speak of the pontifical government. If he had been as sincere as he was gallant, he would have given you more information on that subject than all the ambassadors in Rome. The long and the short of that information would be, to tell you what you already know, I hope....

I leave the 21st for Fontainebleau, which will prevent me, it may be, from going to Germany, as I had planned, the end of this month. I shall be there until July 5th--that is to say, until the end of the sojourn. I think you will have returned next week, and that I shall see you before my departure. I hope this will decide you to come a little earlier, if need be.

You do not refer to your health. I suppose that, in spite of the wretched papal cooking, you are returning in good condition. I have had influenza constantly, more or less, and have been wheezy as usual, in the bargain. The stay at Fontainebleau will certainly finish me up, according to all the indications. I will tell you why I did not endeavour to escape this honour.

I am thinking of taking a short trip to Germany this summer, in order to see the propylons of my friend, M. Klenze, in Munich, and also to take the waters which have been advised for me, but in which I have no great faith. As I am unaccustomed to being ill, I persevere tenaciously in trying to get well, and if I do not succeed, I do not wish it to be from any fault of mine.

You have not dared, probably, to read _Mademoiselle de la Quintinie_, while you were on holy ground. It is mediocre. The book has but one pretty scene. In novels I know of nothing new that is worthy of your wrath. _Chmielnicki_ is in its fifth article, which I am now correcting, and it is not the final one. I will give you the proofs, if you like, if you can read them not corrected.

Good-bye, dear friend. I should be glad if you would decide to hasten your return.

CCLXIV

PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU, _Thursday, July 2, 1863_.

DEAR FRIEND: I should have liked to reply sooner to your letter, which gave me much pleasure; but here one has no time for anything, and the days pass with an astonishing rapidity without knowing how. The important and principal occupations are eating, drinking, and sleeping. I am successful in respect to the first two, but not as to the last. It is a very poor preparation for sleep to spend three or four hours in tight trousers, rowing on the lake, and catching a terrible cold. There are a number of people here, well selected, it seems to me, and much less official than usual; which contributes to the cordial relations between the guests. Now and then we take walks in the woods, after dining on the grass like the milliners of the rue Saint Denis.

Several immense chests were brought here day before yesterday from his Majesty Tu-Duc, the Emperor of Cochin-China. They were opened in one of the court-yards. Within the large chest were smaller ones painted red and gold, and covered with roaches. The first which was opened contained two very yellow elephant tusks, and two rhinoceros horns, plus a package of mouldy cinnamon. From all this there arose inconceivable odours, something between rancid butter and spoiled fish. In the other chest were quantities of rolls of very narrow stuffs resembling gauze, in all sorts of hideous colours, all more or less soiled, and, moreover, mouldy. They had promised to send some gold medallions, but they did not come, and have remained, probably, in China. The inference is that this great Emperor of Cochin-China is a fraud.

We went yesterday to see the manœuvres of two regiments of cavalry, and were horribly roasted. All the ladies are sun-burned. To-day we are going to have a Spanish dinner in the forest, and I am charged with the _gaspacho_--that is, to make the ladies eat raw onions. The mere mention of this vegetable would cause them to faint. I have given orders that they are not to be warned, and after they have eaten the onions I reserve to myself the privilege of making a confession, in the manner of that of Atræus.

I am delighted that my Cossack[30] has not bored you to death. For my own part I am beginning to be very tired of him. It is absolutely necessary to bury him the first of next month, and I do not know how to bring it about. Although I brought my notes and books with me, I can not succeed in accomplishing any work here.

Good-bye, dear friend. I expect to be here until Monday, or Tuesday at the latest. At the same time, they pretend that on account of our extreme amiability, they wish to hold us here several days still. I hope to find you in Paris when I come. Again good-bye.

CCLXV

LONDON, _August 12, 1863_.

DEAR FRIEND: I thank you for your letter, which I was expecting impatiently. I thought I should find London empty, and, indeed, that was the first impression which I received. But after two days I perceived that the great ant-hill was still inhabited, and especially, alas! that they ate as much and as long as they did last year. Is not the slowness with which people dine in this country inhuman? It even takes away my appetite. One is never less than two hours and a half at table, and if we add the half hour in which the men leave the women to speak ill of them, it is always eleven o’clock when we return to the drawing-room. It would be only half bad if we were eating all the time; but with the exception of roast mutton, I find nothing to my taste.

The great men seem to me to have aged a little since my last visit. Lord Palmerston has renounced his false teeth, which make an immense change in his appearance. He has retained his whiskers, and looks like a gorilla that is slightly tipsy. Lord Russell has a less good-humoured expression than formerly. The great beauties of the season have departed, but they were not praised as anything extraordinary. The toilets seem to me, as usual, very common and shabby; but nothing can resist the air of this country. My throat is an evidence of it. I am as hoarse as a wolf, and breathe very badly.

I fancy that you must be having cooler weather than we, and that the sea-baths will give you an appetite. I am beginning to be bored with London and the English, and shall be in Paris before the 25th. And you? I have read a rather amusing book, _The History of George III_, by a Mr. Phillimore, who makes out this prince to be a rascal and a fool. It is very witty, and convincing enough. I paid twenty francs for the last work of Borrow, _The Wild Wales_. If you want to pay fifteen francs for it, I shall be charmed to turn it over to you. But you will not want it at any price. The fellow has altogether deteriorated. Good-bye, dear friend.

CCLXVI

PARIS, _August 30, 1863_.

I go to-morrow to Biarritz with Panizzi, who joined me here yesterday. We are invited by our gracious sovereign, who will entertain us at the sea-shore for I know not how long. I shall settle in Cannes during October, returning to Paris for the discussion of the address, and remaining here, probably, all the month of November. In spite of presidents and sea-monsters, I hope to see you at that time.

I have an extremely curious book, which I will lend you if you are good and kind to me. It is an account of a trial of the Seventeenth Century, related by an imbecile. A nun belonging to his Majesty’s family was in love with a Milanese gentleman, and as there were other nuns to whom this was displeasing, they killed her, aided by her lover. It is highly edifying, and, as an exponent of the morals of the time, very interesting.

Read _Une Saison à Paris_, by Madame de ----. She is a person abounding in candour, who felt a keen desire to make herself agreeable to his majesty, and said so to him at a ball in terms so categoric and so definite, that nobody in the world, except yourself, would have failed to understand her. He was so astounded that he found nothing to say in reply, and it was only after three days, so they say, that he repulsed her. I can imagine you making the sign of the cross and that horrified face with which I am so familiar.

Have you read Renan’s _Life of Jesus_? Probably not. It is a small book, but full of import. ‘Tis like a great blow of an axe on the edifice of Catholicism. The author is so terrified by his own audacity in denying the divinity of Christ, that he loses himself in hymns of praise and adoration, until he has no longer the philosophic understanding which enables him to decide on questions of doctrine. It is interesting, however, and if you have not already done so, you will read it with pleasure.

I have my packing to do, and so I must leave you. My address until the new order is established will be Villa Eugénie, Biarritz (Basses-Pyrénées). Write to me quickly. Good-bye.

CCLXVII

CANNES, _October 19, 1863_.

DEAR FRIEND: I have been here a week, resting in the desert from the fatigues of the court. The weather is magnificent. I see in the paper that your Loire is overflowing its banks; from which I conclude that you are having frightful storms, and I pity you from the bottom of my heart.

I shall enjoy Provence but a fortnight longer, as I must return for the opening of the session. I am not sanguine over it. The death of M. Billault makes it an unpropitious beginning. For some time past I have talked assiduously, preached and persuaded M. Thiers to preach likewise, but I do not know what will be the result. It seems to me that we are drawing nearer and nearer our former parliamentary course, and that we are about to repeat once more the cycle of the same mistakes, and perhaps the same catastrophes. See, in addition, the strenuous efforts on the part of the clericals to make themselves detested, and to stretch the cord until it snaps. All this is enough to make one pessimistic concerning the future.

You have heard that on our journey here we were derailed near Saint Chamas. I was not at all affected, not even by fear, for I did not realise the danger until it was past. The only persons injured were the mail-clerks, who were thrown in a heap among their tables and chests. They came out of it with severe bruises, but no broken limbs.

Have you read the charge of the Bishop of Tulle, who orders all the pious ones of his diocese to recite _Aves_ in honour of M. Renan, or, rather, to prevent the devil from carrying off everybody, because of this same M. Renan’s book?

Since you are reading the letters of Cicero, you must see that in his age people had more wit than in ours. I am overwhelmed with shame every time I think of our nineteenth century, which I find in every respect so inferior to its predecessors.

I believe I made you read the _Lettres de la Duchesse de Choiseul_. I wish some one to-day would try to publish those of our most beautiful society woman. I leave you to go fishing, or, rather, to see other people fish, for I have never succeeded in landing a fish. The best part of it is that on the sea-shore they make an excellent soup for those who like oil and garlic. I suppose you are among this class.

Shall I find you in Paris early in November? I am expecting to be able to remain there all the month, except a few days, perhaps, at Compiègne, if my sovereign invites me there for his fête-day. Good-bye, dear friend.

CCLXVIII

CHÂTEAU DE COMPIÈGNE, _November 16, 1863_. _At night._

DEAR FRIEND: Since my arrival here I have led the exciting life of an impresario. I have been author, actor, and stage director. We have played, with success, a piece which is somewhat immoral, the theme of which I will tell you on my return. We have had beautiful fireworks, although a woman who wished to see them too closely was killed outright. We take long walks, and until the present I have succeeded in escaping from all these diversions without catching cold.

I shall be held here for another week. I shall remain in Paris, probably, until early in December, and shall then return to Cannes, which I left with nature abloom. It is impossible to imagine anything more beautiful than those fields of jasmines and tuberoses. I am not feeling very well, and the last few days especially I have been good for nothing and despondent.

You write to me so laconically, that you never reply to my questions. You have a way of acting in accordance with your caprices which perplexes me always; you jest, you make promises; when I read your letters I fancy I hear your voice speaking. I am disarmed, but in reality furious.

You tell me nothing about that charming child in whom you are so interested. Bring her up, I pray you, so that she will not become as silly as most of the women of our time. Never, I think, has anything like it been seen. You will tell me what they are in the provinces. If they are worse than in Paris, I can not imagine in what desert one may escape them.

We have stopping here Mademoiselle ----, who is a lovely slip of a girl five feet four inches in height, with all the gracefulness of a grisette, and a blending of easy manners with sincere timidity which is sometimes most amusing. Some one expressed apprehension that the second part of a charade would not equal the introduction (of which I was the author).

“That is all right,” she said; “we will show our legs in the ballet, and that will compensate them for everything else.”

N. B.--Her legs are like two pipe-stems, and her feet not exactly aristocratic.

Good-bye, dear friend....

CCLXIX

PARIS, _Friday, December 12, 1863_.

DEAR FRIEND: I was about to write to you when I received your letter. You complain of having a cold, but you do not know what it means to have one. At this moment, but one person in Paris has a cold, and that person is myself. I spend my time coughing and choking, and if it continues, you will soon have to deliver my funeral oration. I am longing anxiously for Cannes, for it is only under its sun that I shall get well. Before going, however, I must vote on that tedious and involved discourse which our president, so worthy of his name,[31] has composed for our edification.

Do you know Aristophanes? Last night, being troubled with insomnia, I took up a volume and read it through. It was highly amusing. I have made a translation of it, none too good a one, but it is subject to your orders. There are things which will be shocking to your prudery, but they will interest you, especially now that you have learned from Cicero something of the morals of the ancients. Good-bye....

CCLXX

CANNES, _January 12, 1864_.

DEAR FRIEND: I was seriously ill on my arrival here. I brought from Paris an abominable cold, and it is only during the last two days that I have begun to feel like myself. I do not know what would have become of me if I had remained in Paris, for I see by the papers that you are having snow. The weather here is admirable, with seldom a cloud, and a temperature which is usually at least 14 degrees. Occasionally, the east wind brings us a touch of snow caught from the Alps, but we are in a favoured oasis. They tell us that all the surrounding country is under snow. At Marseilles, at Toulon, and even at Hyères, it is said the ground is covered. I imagine a citizen of Marseilles in the snow as something like a cat walking on ice with nut-shells on his paws. It is a long time, even at Cannes, since such a lovely, mild winter has been known.

I am charmed that Aristophanes had the honour of pleasing you. You ask me if the Athenian ladies were present at the theatrical representations? There are men of learning who say Yes, and others who say No. If you had gone to see Karagueuz when you visited the Orient, you would have found, no doubt, many women there. In Eastern countries to-day, and formerly in antiquity, there is not and there never has been any of the false modesty which you have. One saw at every glance men in bathing costumes, and on every public square were statues of gods which gave ladies an exaggerated idea of the human form.

What is the name of that comedy in which Euripides is dressed as a woman? Do you understand the stage setting, and the part of the Scythian gendarme? What is more extraordinary than anything else is the unceremonious fashion in which Aristophanes speaks of the gods, even on their festival days, for it was at the Dionysia that the play of _The Frogs_ was given, wherein Bacchus takes a singular rôle.

The same thing occurred during the early period of Christianity. Comedy was played in the churches. There was a Mass of the Fools and a Mass of the Ass, the text of which is still extant in a very curious manuscript. The wicked have spoiled everything by doubting. When faith was universal, all was permissible.

Besides the absurdities which Aristophanes throws, like lumps of salt, into his plays, there are choruses of the most exquisite poetry. My revered teacher, M. Boissonade, used to say that no other Greek writer had written better poetry. If you have not read it already, I recommend to you _The Clouds_. It is, to my mind, the best of his plays that have been preserved. In it there occurs a dialogue between the Just and the Unjust, which is in the most elevated style. I think there is some truth in the reproaches which he addresses to Socrates. Even after having heard him in _Plato_, one is tempted to forgive him the hemlock. A man who proves to every one, as Socrates did, that he is a fool, is a plague.

I have just read that the conspiracies are beginning again. I have no doubt that those Italian devils, and those no less Polish devils, would like to set the world on fire; and the world, unhappily, is so stupid that it will allow it to be done. I have had letters from Italy which cause me to fear that Garibaldi and his volunteers will in the spring undertake some movement against Venice. It needs but some calamity of that sort to finish us up entirely.

Good-bye, dear friend. I try to think as little as possible of the future. Keep well, and think of me now and then. Have you any suggestion for the 14th of February, Sainte-Eulalie’s fête-day? Again good-bye.

CCLXXI

CANNES, _February 17, 1864_.

DEAR FRIEND: Since you have been willing to take the trouble to read Aristophanes, I will forgive your affectations and your prudishness in reading him. Admit, however, that he is very witty, and that it would be a great pleasure to see one of his comedies played. I do not know what the opinion of erudites of our day is on the presence of women at the theatre. It is probable that there were in the same country periods of tolerance and of intolerance, but women never appeared on the stage. Their parts were played by men, which was all the easier, since the actors invariably wore masks....

I am desperately ill, dear friend, and realise that I am on the way to a better world, through a path which is not the most agreeable. From time to time, the intervals of which are much more frequent than formerly, I have convulsions, and attacks of severe pain. I scarcely ever sleep; I have no appetite, and suffer from weakness, which is most exasperating. The least exercise exhausts me.

What will become of me when, instead of a magnificent sky, I shall have the leaden skies of Paris, and constant rain and fog! I am thinking, nevertheless, of returning by the end of this month, if I have the strength, for I am somewhat ashamed of doing none of my official duties. It is necessary to sacrifice one’s self, and I reconcile myself to it, whatever may befall.

Since I have already waited so long, I will wait longer for Sainte-Eulalie’s gift. So far as pins and rings are concerned, I fancy the embarrassment is the same as of old. Her bureau-drawers have been overcrowded with them ever since I first began to remember my cousin’s fête-day. I have exhausted every variety of trinkets possible to imagine. If you have discovered anything out of the ordinary, which is not ruinous, you will have solved a tremendous problem.

There is another and still more interesting one on which I shall be obliged to consult you. It is how I shall manage, in a legitimate way or otherwise, to have some clothes sent me from London. Among your sea-dogs, it is not impossible that there is some one by whom Mr. Poole might send my clothes. Think about this, and you will render me a great service.

Good-bye, dear friend. I have had a wretched night, and coughed enough to split my cranium. I hope you have escaped all the forms of cold which are so prevalent. In Paris it seems that every one is afflicted, and that some people even are stupid enough to die of it. Good-bye again.

CCLXXII

_Friday, March 18, 1864._

I am writing to you in the Luxembourg, while the Archbishop of Rouen is thundering away at impiety. I have been very ill; I never have two good days successively, but frequently several bad ones. I am not yet sure that I shall be in any condition to go to Germany, as I had planned. It will depend on the weather and on my lungs.

I am still tied in the Luxembourg, but we shall finish the engagement, I hope, next week, and I shall then be freer. If you have not yet seen in the Louvre the new hall where the collection of vases and terra-cottas are placed, you would do well to go there. I offer you the light of my knowledge to accompany you there. You will see some things which are very beautiful, and others which will interest you, although they may shock your prudery. Appoint your day and hour.

CCLXXIII

_Wednesday, April 13, 1864._

DEAR FRIEND: I regretted keenly your departure. You ought to have bidden me one more farewell. You would have found me decidedly blue. In spite of arsenic and the rest, I suffer constantly from exhaustion. After the cold abated, I was beginning to feel better, but I have taken a cold which casts me down lower than ever.

I seldom go out; still I was anxious to see my sovereigns, whom I found in excellent health. This visit gave me an opportunity of seeing the new fashions, which I do not altogether admire, especially the basques worn by the women. This is a sign that I am growing old. I can not endure the hair-dressing. There is not a single woman who dresses her hair to suit her face; they all follow the style of wigged heads. I met one of my friends who presented me to his wife. She is a young and pretty woman, but she had a foot of rouge, pencilled eyelashes, and was powdered. She disgusted me.

Have you read About’s book? I have it, and it is at your service. I do not know whether it is a success; nevertheless it is very witty. The clericals, perhaps, had good sense enough not to anathematise it, which is the most positive way of insuring the popularity of a book. It is in this way that the success of Renan, pecuniarily speaking, was achieved. I am told that he made a hundred and seventy thousand francs by his idyl.

I have still, subject to your orders, three immense volumes of Taine on the history of English literature. It is both witty and sensible. The style is somewhat affected, but it is delightful reading. I have also two volumes of Mézières on an analogous subject, the contemporaries and successors of Shakespeare. It is Taine warmed over, or, rather, cooled down. As for novels, I no longer read them.

We nominate to-morrow in the Academy either the Marseillais Autran or Jules Janin. Apparently, it will be the former. My candidate will be defeated. I have promised myself to go to the Academy no more, except to collect my allowance, eighty-three francs, twenty-three centimes, every month. During the next two years the mortality among the members will be frightful. I examined yesterday the faces of my colleagues; not to mention my own, one would suppose them to be people awaiting the coming of the grave-digger. I can not imagine who will be elected to replace them.

When shall you return? You spoke of remaining a fortnight only at ----; but I suppose that you will, as usual, string out that fortnight into a long month. I desire earnestly to see you soon and take a walk, as we used to do, admiring radiant nature. It would be for me a rare occasion to enjoy a little poetry.

Farewell, dear friend. Write to me. If you have at your disposal none but the town library, you would do well to read _Lucian_, in the translation of Pierrot d’Ablancourt, or some one else; it would amuse you, and indulge your Hellenic tastes.

I am deep in a history of Peter the Great, which I mean to share with the public. He was an abominable man, surrounded by abominable scamps. His history amuses me no little.

Write to me as soon as you have received my letter.

CCLXXIV

LONDON, _British Museum_, _July 21, 1864_.

DEAR FRIEND: You have guessed my retreat. I have been here since the last time we met, or, to speak more exactly, since the following day. I spend my time, from eight at night until midnight, in dining out, and the morning in examining books and statues, or else in writing my long article on the son of Peter the Great, to which I am tempted to give the title: _On the Danger of Being Stupid_, for the moral to be drawn from my work is the necessity of being clever.

I think you will find, here and there, in a score of pages, some things which would interest you, notably how Peter the Great was deceived by his wife. I have translated with great care and pains the letters of his wife to her lover, who was impaled for his trouble. They are really better than one would expect of the time and country in which she wrote, but love works miracles. It was a misfortune that she did not know how to spell, which makes it extremely difficult for grammarians like myself to guess what she means.

These are my plans: I am to go, Monday, to Chevenings, to visit Lord Stanhope, where I shall stay three days. Thursday I shall dine here with a large company, leaving immediately afterwards for Paris.

They talk of nothing here but the marriage of Lady Florence Paget, the London beauty of two seasons ago. It is impossible to see a prettier face or a more graceful figure, but too small and delicate to suit my own taste. She was notorious for her flirtations. M. Ellice’s nephew, Chaplin, of whom you have often heard me speak, a tall fellow of twenty-five, with an income of twenty-five thousands pounds sterling, fell in love with her. She trifled with him a long time, then engaged herself, and it is said, accepted jewels and six thousand pounds to pay her debts with the dressmaker. The day for the marriage was appointed. Last Friday, they went together to the park and to the opera. Saturday morning she went out alone, proceeded to the Church of Saint George, and there was married to Lord Hastings, a young man of her own age, very homely, and with two petty vices, gambling and drink. After the religious ceremony they went to the country to consummate other ceremonies.

At the first stop she wrote to her father as follows:

“DEAR PA: As I knew you would never consent to my marriage with Lord Hastings, I was wedded to him to-day. I remain yours, etc.”

She wrote also to Chaplin:

“DEAR HARRY: When you receive this, I shall be the wife of Lord Hastings. Forget yours, very truly,

FLORENCE.”

This poor Chaplin, who is six feet tall, and has yellow hair, is in despair.

Good-bye, dear friend. Write to me quickly.

CCLXXV

PARIS, _October 1, 1864_.

DEAR FRIEND: I am still here, but like a bird on the limb. I have been delayed by my proofs, and you may well understand that they need the most careful correction.

I shall start without fail on the 8th, stopping to spend the night at Bayonne, and reaching Madrid the 11th. I do not yet know how long I shall be there. From Madrid I shall go to Cannes, perhaps without passing through Paris. Winter is already making itself felt disagreeably for my lungs, in the mornings and evenings. The days are magnificent, but the evenings devilish chilly. Take care not to catch cold in the damp country in which you are staying. I enjoy myself well enough at this season in Paris, where there are no social duties, and where one may live like a hermit. From time to time I go out to get the news, but I obtain very little.

The Pope has forbidden the painting of signs in French in Rome. They must all be in Italian. On the Corso there is a Madame Bernard, who sells gloves and garters. They have forced her to call herself henceforth Signora Bernardi. If I were the Government I should never have permitted this, even if it were necessary to hang some sign-painter in front of the first shop which they wished to change. When our army shall have departed, you will see then what those people will do....

Here the sharks--that is to say, the money-lenders--are scowling on the nomination of M. ---- to the Bank; but it is not known that when one is supposed to be good for nothing, it is then that they select him. It is the custom. M. ---- went to the Bank, his night-cap in his pocket, expecting to sleep there the night succeeding his nomination. He was told that every preparation had been made to receive him, except the accomplishment of one small formality, which was, to purchase a hundred shares of stock of the said Bank. M. ---- was completely ignorant of this little article in the charter of the establishment of which he is to be a director. A great nuisance it is, inasmuch as a hundred shares are not to be easily found, and, besides the money it will require several weeks at least to procure them. You see how much he understands about business.

There is still another big scandal here, which amuses perverse people, but I shall not tell you about it for fear of making you angry. Good-bye, dear friend.

CCLXXVI

MADRID, _October 24, 1864_.

DEAR FRIEND: I came here by chance, for I am stopping in the country, and shall remain there until Saturday. It is abominably cold and damp, and in consequence Madame de M.’s niece has taken erysipelas. Half of the household are ill, and I have a severe cold. You are aware that colds are serious matters to me, who find it difficult enough to breathe even when I am well. The bad weather has continued a week, with shocking violence, in harmony with the fashion of this country, where transitions, of whatever sort are unknown.

Can you imagine the misery of people living on an elevated plateau, exposed to every wind that blows, and having no means of keeping warm excepting _braseros_, a primitive article of furniture which gives one the choice of freezing or suffocating? I find that civilisation here has made great progress, which, in my eyes, is no improvement. The women have adopted your absurd hats, and wear them in the most grotesque fashion. The bulls, also, have lost much of their merit, and the men who kill them are nowadays ignorant, cowardly fellows.

This is the delightful story which now absorbs the minds of the respectable public. Lady C., the wife of the minister of ----, she young and pretty, he old and ugly, sued for divorce, on the grounds that her husband was unjust towards her. The trial took place in London, and it was decreed gallantly that he was a good-for-nothing. There are, however, women in Madrid who assume to know that it was a calumny. However that may be, the woman obtained her divorce, and almost immediately afterwards married the duke of ----, who had for some time paid court to her in Madrid. It seems that she has not the same grounds of complaint towards her new husband as she had to the former, but here is the devil of an affair. The duke of ---- has sued his half-sister, the duchess of ----, on account of certain deeds, estates, etc. She has just discovered that her brother, who was born in France, in order to succeed to his inheritance, had presented a certificate of baptism signed by a _curé_, an act which in France is illegal. It is found, moreover, that this certificate is a counterfeit, and is contradicted by the certificate of birth at the office of the Registry of State, which proves that the present duke was born in Paris several years previously, of an unknown mother. This mother is the third wife of the duke of ----, married at that time to a fourth, for in that family the marriages are always out of the ordinary.

This is going to make a pretty lawsuit, as you will see, and it is quite possible that ex-lady C. will find herself some fine morning with no peerage and no fortune. Meanwhile, she will soon arrive in Madrid with her husband, and sir J. C. has requested a change of residence.

I have taken steps to find the _Nipi_ handkerchiefs, but I have not yet succeeded in discovering any. Apparently they are no longer fashionable. However, I am promised some the first of next month. I hope they will keep their word.

Everything, it seems, is quiet enough, politically speaking. Besides, at this moment it is too cold to fear a _pronunciamiento_. I think of remaining here until the 10th or 12th of November, if I do not die of my cold before then.

Where are you? What are you doing? Write to me soon.

CCLXXVII

CANNES, _December 4, 1864_.

DEAR FRIEND: I have arrived here, and find no letter from you, which grieves me very much....

I pass on to another source of grievance against you. You have given me no end of trouble with your handkerchiefs. After many fruitless journeys, I discovered finally a half dozen _Nipi_ handkerchiefs, hideously ugly. I took them, although everybody said they had been out of fashion for a long time; but I was following my orders. I hope you have received those six handkerchiefs, or that you will receive them in a few days. I sent them by one of my friends, whom I charged to have them delivered at your house. You asked to have them embroidered. There were none in Madrid except the six that were sent you. The plain ones seemed to me even uglier; they had red stripes, like the handkerchiefs carried by college students.

I left Madrid in deuced cold weather, and shivered the whole of the journey. I did nothing else during the entire time of my stay there. On this side of the Bidassoa the temperature is enchantingly mild, and I find the atmosphere usually so in this country. We are having superb weather, and no wind.

I think I wrote you from Madrid everything worth telling about my acquaintances, notably the adventures of the duchess of ----, which must have shocked you. Did I mention also the young Andalusian girl in love with a young man who is discovered to be the grandson of the hangman of Havana? There are threats of suicide on the part of the mother, the daughter, and the future husband, by which I mean that all three threaten to kill themselves unless they are allowed to have their way. When I left Madrid, no deaths had occurred, and the respectable public was strongly in sympathy with the lovers.

Good-bye, dear friend. Send me some word of yourself, and tell me your plans for this winter.

CCLXXVIII

CANNES, _December 30, 1864_.

DEAR FRIEND: I wish you a happy New Year. I have written to Madrid about the unlucky handkerchiefs, and, as I have received no response, I take it for granted that my commissioner is in Paris, and that you have the handkerchiefs, or will have them soon. I sent them by a Spaniard who was to leave Madrid the same time as I, in consequence of which you would receive them more promptly. One should never have too high expectations. What I now desire is that you should be satisfied with those handkerchiefs, which are awfully ugly.

What think you of the Pope’s Encyclical? We have a bishop here, a man of intelligence and good sense, who hides his face. Indeed, it is humiliating to belong to an army whose general exposes you to defeat.

I have no news from my editor. When I left he was printing my _Cossacks of the Past_, which I think must have appeared. As you know the story I hope you will wait until I return to procure a volume.

Do you know that from all sides have arrived congratulations on my successorship to M. Mocquard? I thought nothing of the matter; but after seeing my name in the _Belgian Independence_, in the _London Times_, and in the _Augsburg Gazette_, I had come to be a little uneasy. Knowing my temperament as you do, you may imagine how the place suited me, and how I suited the place. I have breathed more easily, however, for several days.

Are there any new novels for Christmas? English novels, I mean, for this is the period for them to bloom! I have almost no books here, and I am anxious to send for some. When at night I have an attack of coughing, and can not sleep, I am as wretched as it is possible to be. Only fancy, I have read Lamartine’s _Meditations_. I have come across a Life of Aristotle, in which it is said that the retreat of the Ten Thousand took place after the death of Alexander. Really, would it not be preferable to peddle steel pens at the door of the Tuileries than to say such enormities?

Good-bye, dear friend. I have thirty-five letters to write, and I wanted to begin with you. I wish you all the prosperity in the world.

CCLXXIX

CANNES, _January 20, 1865_.

DEAR FRIEND: Have you at last received your execrable _Nipi_ handkerchiefs? I have learned that the person to whom I intrusted them, having been elected a member of the Cortes, remained in Madrid, and gave the handkerchiefs to Madame de Montijo, who did not understand what they were, for a Spaniard is not conspicuously clear in making an explanation. I have written to the countess Montijo, begging her to give the package to our ambassador, who will send it to you by the French mail. I hope you will have the thing before receiving my letter; but I do not wish ever again to assume the responsibility of your purchases, which force me to take more trouble and to write more prose than they are worth. The best thing for you to do is to throw the handkerchiefs into the fire.

I have suffered severely the last week from exhaustion. We are having a detestable winter, not cold, but rainy and windy. I have never experienced anything like it. For a week nearly, in spite of M. Mathieu (of the Drôme), we have had delightful, warm days, which are the greatest benefit to me, for my lungs are better, or worse, according to the height of the barometer.

I find amusement in reading the letters of the bishops. There are few lawyers more subtle than these gentlemen; but the best of them is M. D----, who interprets the Pope’s Encyclical as exactly the reverse of what he really said, and it is not impossible that he may be excommunicated at Rome. Is it possible that they are hoping for a miracle to return to them Marche, the Legations, and the county of Avignon? The worst of it is, that society in this age is so stupid, that, in order to escape the Jesuits, it will probably throw itself into the arms of the Bousingots.[32]

I know nothing of my works, and, if you have learned anything about them, I should be obliged if you would tell me. I corrected my proofs for the _Journal des Savants_, and for Michel Levy, and I have had no word from either of them.

The number of English here becomes daily more frightful. A new hatch has been built on the sea-shore, which is almost as large as the Louvre, and it is always full. You can not take a walk without meeting young misses in Garibaldi jackets, with impossible feather-trimmed hats, making a pretence at sketching. They have croquet and archery parties, to which come a hundred and twenty persons. I regret keenly the good old times when not a soul came here.

I have made the acquaintance of a tame seagull, which I feed with fish. He catches them in the air, always head first, and swallows some which are larger than my neck. Do you recollect an ostrich at the Jardin des Plantes, which you came near strangling with rye bread in the time when you used to adorn the place with your presence?

Good-bye, dear friend. I expect to return soon to Paris, and to have the great happiness of seeing you there. Again good-bye....

CCLXXX

CANNES, _April 14, 1865_.

DEAR FRIEND: I have delayed writing to you until I should be well, or, at least less ill; but notwithstanding the lovely weather, notwithstanding every possible attention, I am still the same--that is to say, very bad. I can not accustom myself to this life of suffering, and I have neither courage nor resignation to endure it. I am waiting until the weather becomes a little warmer before returning to Paris, and it will probably be the first of May before I arrive. Here, for the last fortnight, we have had the most glorious skies, and a sea to correspond, but it does not keep me from coughing as if it were still freezing weather.

What has become of you this spring? Shall I find you in Paris, or are you going to ----, to watch the budding of the first leaves?

So your friend Paradol becomes an Academician by the will of the burgraves, who, in fact, have compelled the poor duc de Broglie to return to Paris, in spite of his gout and his eighty years. It will be a curious session. Ampère has written a wretchedly poor history of Caesar, and in verse, in the bargain. You may imagine all the allusions which M. Paradol will find occasion to make to this work, forgotten to-day by everybody except the burgraves. Jules Janin remained without, and also my friend Autran, who being from Marseilles, for no other reason than to be elected to the Academy, became a clerical, and was after all deserted by his religious friends.

You knew, perhaps, that Mr. William Brougham, brother of lord Brougham, and next in line to the peerage, has just been caught in the act of a very ugly piece of cheating. It is creating a tremendous scandal here among the English colony. Lord Brougham shows a bold front; he is, besides, perfectly innocent in all this villainy.

I am reading, to keep me patient and to put me to sleep, a book by a M. Charles Lambert, which demolishes the holy king David and the Bible. It seems to me quite ingenious, and tolerably amusing. The clericals have succeeded in having read and bringing into popularity serious and pedantic books, which fifteen years ago would have attracted the attention of no one. Renan has gone to Palestine to make new researches into the scenery. Peyrat and this Charles Lambert are at work on books more erudite and more serious, which sell like hot cakes, so my bookseller tells me. Good-bye, dear friend.

CCLXXXI

PARIS, _July 5, 1865_.

I was beginning to fear that you had been struck by lightning, like Madame Arbuthnot, or that that you had been devoured by some bear. I thought you certainly in the heart of the Tyrol, when your letter arrived from ----. In my opinion it is preferable to travel in the long days rather than in autumn; but let nothing prevent you from seeing Munich in September. You must be careful only to provide yourself with warm clothing, because the weather changes very suddenly in that broad, ugly, high plain of Munich.

Nothing is easier than to make this journey. You may go to Munich by way of Strasburg, or, if you prefer, by Basel. I think that there is now a railway as far as Constance. You can, in any case, reach there by steamboat. At Constance you take the lake boat for Lindau, which is a pretty little town; and from there to Kempten you will see a succession of admirable views. You may go to Munich direct by train, or you may stop on the route between Lindau and Kempten. From Kempten to Munich there is nothing but flat, unattractive scenery.

You must go to the Hotel Bavaria, and not to Maullich’s, where I was robbed of my boots. A valet or an official guide will show you everything worthy of attention. The paintings at the palace, taken from scenes of the Nibelungen, are rather interesting, but you will need to obtain special permission to see them. All the rest is open to the public. Examine carefully, that you may tell me about them, the new propylons of my late friend Klenze. In the Museum of Antiquities you will see the pediments of the temple of Egina, and the marble group of which I have told you. The Grecian vases are extremely curious, and the paintings of _Pinacothèque_ equally so. The frescoes of Cornelius and other imitations of originals will cause you to shrug your shoulders.

Go and drink some beer in the public gardens, where, for a few sous, you may enjoy excellent music. If you have the time, it will be worth your while to make a few trips into the Bavarian Tyrol, to Tegernsee, and elsewhere. When you go to Salzburg (on which I congratulate you) you may go to see, if you like, the salt-mine of Hallein. At Innsbruck there is nothing to see but the landscape and the bronze statues of the cathedral. In all this country you may stop at any of the smallest villages, sure of finding a bed and a tolerable dinner. I should be glad to share the pleasures of the journey with you.

Here there are stories afloat of the most scandalous nature possible to imagine....

This is all highly edifying, and gives rise to fear that the end of the world is at hand. Buy yourself some green stockings at Salzburg or at Innsbruck, if you find any that fit you. Bavarian legs are as big as my body.

Good-bye, dear friend. Take good care of yourself and enjoy yourself. Do not forget to let me hear from you.

CCLXXXII

LONDON, _British Museum_, _August 23, 1865_.

DEAR FRIEND: After awaiting your letter a long time, in Paris, it finally arrived, written while you were in the heart of the Tyrol. I have been here for about six weeks. I was here during the concluding days of the season. I went to some terrible dinners, and two or three of the last balls.

It seems to me that lord Palmerston has aged perceptibly, notwithstanding his success at the elections, and I feel that it is more than doubtful whether he will be in any condition to engage in the next campaign. At his retirement, there will be, doubtless, a fine crisis.

I have just spent three days at the home of his probable successor, Mr. Gladstone, who did not amuse me, but who interested me, for it is always a pleasure for me to observe the varieties of human nature. Here they are so unlike ours, that it is inexplicable how, in a ten hours’ journey, one finds the featherless bipeds to be so utterly different from those in Paris.

Mr. Gladstone seemed to me to be in some respects a man of genius, in others a child. In him are the elements of the child, the statesman, and the lunatic. Staying at his house were five or six curates or deans, and every morning the guests of the castle were entertained with a short prayer in common. I was not present on a Sunday, which must be something extraordinary.

What seemed to me preferable to all the rest was a sort of badly baked roll which is removed from the oven at breakfast-time, and which one finds it difficult to digest during the rest of the day. Besides this there is the hard _civrn_, that is the ale of Wales, which is celebrated.

You know, of course, that red hair is the only kind fashionable at the moment. It appears that nothing is easier to have in this country, and I doubt whether it is dyed.

For a month no one has been in town. There is not a single horse in Rotten Row, but I am contented enough to be in a great city in this state of lethargy. I have taken advantage of it to see the lions. Yesterday I went to the Crystal Palace, and spent an hour looking at a chimpanzee almost as tall as a ten-year-old child, and in his actions so like a child that I felt humiliated by his unquestionable relationship. Among other peculiarities, I observed the calculation of the animal in setting in motion a heavy swing, and in waiting to leap upon it until it had attained its greatest speed. I doubt whether all children would have exhibited as much talent for observation.

While here I have written a long article on the _History of Caesar_, which does not entirely displease me; in it there is mental pabulum, as they say in academic style, and next week I shall return to Paris to read it to the _Journal des Savants_. It is not quite impossible that I may find you there. I am beginning to have enough of London.

At one time I had an idea of going to Scotland, but there I should have fallen among the hunters, a race which I abhor.

A newspaper had in its telegraphic items the news that Ponsard was dying. Since then I have seen no mention of him, and my letters, even academic ones, make no reference to him. I am quite interested in the matter; it may be, however, only a false report.

Good-bye, dear friend. Write to me in Paris, where I shall be soon, and keep me informed of your movements. Come back from the Tyrol, I pray you, with green stockings, but I defy you to bring back legs the size of those of the mountaineers.

CCLXXXIII

PARIS, _September 12, 1865_, _at night_.

DEAR FRIEND: I have been here for several days. I came by way of Boulogne, and while our boat was being moored at the quay there was such a crowd that I asked myself what could be so interesting in the arrival of a steam-boat. The English ladies will have to be warned that in walking at low tide along the edge of the wharf they make a great exhibition of legs, and even more. My modesty received a shock.

Paris this year is more empty than ever, but I enjoy it in that state. I rise and go to bed late. I read a great deal, and scarcely ever get out of my dressing-gown. I have a Japanese one, with flowers on a jonquil-yellow background, more brilliant than the electric light.

My stay in England was not, after all, very tiresome. Besides a number of pleasant excursions which I made, I wrote for the _Journal des Savants_ that article on the _Life of Julius Caesar_, of which I have already made mention to you. As it was the editors in person who imposed this task on me, I was obliged to acquiesce. You know how much I value the author and his book; but you may understand the difficulties of my position, not wishing to be considered as a flatterer, nor to say unbecoming things. I think I managed to get out of the difficulty fairly well.

I took for a text the fact that the Republic had reached its limit, and that the Roman people were going to the devil, if Caesar had not delivered them. As the thesis is true and easily supported, I wrote variations on this air. I will save one of the proofs for you.

Manners are still progressing. A son of prince de C. has just died in Rome. He left a brother and sisters in straitened circumstances. He was an ecclesiastic, a monseigneur, and had an income of two hundred thousand pounds, and every penny of it he has left to a little abbé of a secretary that he had. It is precisely as if Nicomedes had bequeathed his kingdom to Caesar. I wager that you do not see the point at all.

I, too, was anxious to go to Germany, and might have surprised you, perhaps, in Munich, but my plan came to naught. I was going to see my friend, Kaullo, that excellent Jew whom I have mentioned to you more than once. But he himself is coming to France, therefore I have given up my idea of Germany. One of my friends returning from Switzerland is not enthusiastic over the weather there; which softens my disappointment.

It seems to me that Boulogne is becoming more beautiful in its buildings no less than in its citizens. I saw fish-women stylishly dressed, and very pretty modern dwellings; but what English women there were, and what pork-pie hats!

Yesterday I called to see the princess Murat, who has almost recovered from her terrible fall. The only signs still remaining are a bruised eye and a cheek slightly discoloured. She gave a vivid account of the accident. She has lost entire consciousness of her fall, and of the following three or four hours. She remembers seeing her coachman, who was a Swiss colonel, thrown up in the air, high above her head; then, four hours later, she found herself in her own bed, with her head big as a gourd. In the interval she walked and talked, but has no recollection of anything. I hope, and think it probable, that during the last moments before death comes, there is also a loss of consciousness.

I found the countess de Montijo entirely recovered from her two operations. She is enthusiastic in praise of her oculist, Liebreich, who seems to be a wonderful man. Try never to require his services.

Good-bye, dear friend. I am going early next week, for three days, to Trouville. I shall then remain here until winter drives me away. Keep me informed of all you do, and of your intentions.

CCLXXXIV

PARIS, _October 13, 1865_.

DEAR FRIEND: I found your letter yesterday, on my return from Biarritz, whence their Majesties brought me back in a fair state of preservation. The first welcome which my native land accorded me, however, was anything but cordial. Last night I suffered one of the most prolonged attacks of choking that I had experienced for weeks. It is the result, I suppose, of the change of temperature, or it may be the effect of thirteen or fourteen hours of jolting over a very rough railroad. It seemed as if I was in a winnowing-basket. This morning I am feeling better.

I have not as yet seen a soul, and think no one has returned to Paris, but I have received some lugubrious letters from persons who speak of nothing but cholera, and who beg me to fly from Paris. Here no one pays any attention to it, so I am told, and the fact is, I believe that, with the exception of several old topers, there have been no serious cases. If the cholera had made its first appearance in Paris, probably we should have thought no more about it. It took the cowardice of the Marseillais to give us the warning. I have informed you of my theory on the subject of cholera; no one dies of it unless he really wishes to die, and it is a visitor so polite, that it never makes a call upon you without sending its visiting-card in advance, as the Chinese do.

I spent my time most agreeably at Biarritz. We had a visit from the king and queen of Portugal. The king is a very shrinking German student. The queen is charming. She bears a strong resemblance to the princess Clotilde, but she is more beautiful. She is a revised edition. Her complexion is that of a lily and of a rose, rare even in England. Her hair is red, to be sure, but it is the dark red so fashionable just now. She is extremely engaging and polite. They brought along with them a certain number of male and female caricatures, who seemed to have been gathered up from some curiosity-shop. My friend, the Portuguese minister, took the queen aside and gave her a little tirade about me, which her Majesty immediately repeated to me with much graciousness. The emperor presented me to the king, who shook hands with me, and looked at me with two big, round, startled eyes, that made me almost fail in my duties.

Another person, M. de Bismarck, pleased me more. He is a large German, very polite, and not at all unsophisticated. His manner is absolutely lacking in _gemüth_, but is full of intelligence. He conquered me completely. He brought with him a wife, who has the biggest feet beyond the Rhine, and a daughter who walks in her mother’s footsteps.

I have said nothing of don Enrique or of the duke of Mecklenburg, I know not why. The Legitimist party is in a terrible state since the death of General Lamoricière. I met yesterday an Orleanist of the old school, who was also disconsolate. How cheaply, nowadays, one becomes a great man!

Please tell me what I may read of the good things written since I ceased to live among the cleverest people of the universe. I should like, indeed, to see you.

Good-bye. I am going to take care of my health until the fêtes at Compiègne make me ill again.

CCLXXXV

PARIS, _November 8, 1865_.

DEAR FRIEND: I have delayed writing to you, because I have been like a bird upon a bough, yet attached by the claw. After bidding adieu to my hostess at Biarritz, I had intended going to my usual wintering-place, and thus to avoid the first effects of the cold; but I was urged to remain for the opening of the season at Compiègne, and the request was asked so graciously, that I could not very well decline. Then followed the questions relating to cholera: to go or not to go to Compiègne. Yesterday only the matter was decided. I am to go, and shall leave here the 14th, to return the 20th. Tell me now if between the 14th and after the 20th, there will be any chance of seeing you.

I returned from Biarritz in an excellent state of preservation, but after three days I experienced all the rigours incident to a change of climate. The fact is, I have been almost constantly desperately ill, not from cholera, but from my usual trouble, inability to breathe, from which may God preserve you! For several days, I have been better. I think that Compiègne will make me much worse, but I shall hasten to take my flight to the South and count on the sunshine to live through the winter, which the successors of M. Mathieu (_de la Drôme_) predict will be a severe one. You, I suppose, expect to be in a mild climate on the borders of the Loire. I hope, at any rate, that you have neither cold nor rheumatism. Would that I were able to say as much!

You can not imagine the scandalous gossip concerning the princess Anna’s marriage, nor the ridiculous anger and rage of the faubourg Saint Germain. There is not a family with a daughter who did not count on the duc de Mouchy. The burning question at present is, “If they make calls, shall we leave cards for them?”

On the other hand, there is in the marriage market at this moment a young girl with several millions in her pocket, and about fifty others to come to her. She is a pretty girl, somewhat mysterious, the daughter of M. Heine, who died this year; an adopted daughter, of course, whose origin no one knows. But in consideration of the millions, the greatest names of France, Italy, and Germany are ready to overlook all the dulness and stupidity. Adopted children of this sort are very pleasing to the goddess Fortune. The Greeks of to-day call them children of the soul; is it not a pretty name?

Have you read the _Chansons des Rues et des Bois_, of Victor Hugo? They will read them, I fancy, at ----. Will you tell me if you find a marked difference between his former poetry and that of to-day? Has he become suddenly mad, or has he always been so? For my part, I incline to the latter.

There is living at present only one man of genius: that is M. Ponson du Terrail. Have you read any of his _feuilletons_? No one equals him in dealing with crime and assassination. I revel in it.

If you were here, I should endeavour to shake your orthodoxy by making you read a curious book on Moses, David, and Saint Paul. It is not an idyl such as Renan writes, but a dissertation, a little too larded with Greek, and even Hebrew. Still, the book is worth the trouble of reading; and, turning to the text, the story of that Yankee who, wishing to write a novel, has written a religious book, and a successful one, is but a rehash. Nothing is more common than to catch a carp when one thinks he is fishing for gudgeon. But you do not enjoy conversation like this, and you are right; there are other things to talk of.

Good-bye, dear friend. I am anxious to see you once more in the flesh.

CCLXXXVI

CANNES, _January 2, 1866_.

DEAR FRIEND: I did not know where to write to you, and this is why I have not written before. You lead such a wandering life, that no one knows where to catch you. I regretted exceedingly that I did not overtake you between Paris and ----, your two customary lairs. You have fallen into the habit of subordinating yourself, in the phraseology of the Saint Simonians of my youth. Now you are the victim of the fisher-folk at ----; again, and more often, you are the victim of that child whom you adore, so that there is no longer any opportunity to see you as in the good old days, when it made me so happy to walk with you. Do you remember them?

I arrived here ill enough in health, after a week at Compiègne spent in tight-fitting trousers, with all the patience possible. They tried to hold me with M. de Massa’s piece, but I resisted strenuously and fled to this place, where the sun has produced its usual effect. Of three days, I have had two good ones; the third even has not been very bad; a slight attack of suffocation not to be compared to the sensation of strangling which a Paris winter brings on.

Why is it that, fond of travelling as you are, and having, moreover, souls in your charge, you do not spend your winters in Pisa or in any place where the great arbiter of the health of humanity, my lord, the Sun, is to be seen? I believe that but for him I should have lain for a long time under several feet of earth.

All my friends are hastening to precede me there. Last year was rough on my little circle of comrades. Several years ago we used to dine together once a month; I think I am now the sole survivor. This is the solemn reproach which I address to the Great Engineer: Why do not men fall like leaves, all in one season? Your Father Hyacinthe will not fail to say absurd things to me on this subject: “O man, what are ten years? What is a century?” and so on. The question for me is, What is eternity? To me the all-important thing is the small number of days. Why must mine be so bitter?

At Cannes this year are only a quarter of the foreigners who come usually. There was a story of a Parisian who ate three lobsters, and died of cholera. The country was at once placed under suspicion, and the mayors of Nice and of Cannes conceived the mistaken idea of denying in the newspapers the appearance of cholera, consequently everybody believed that it had come. A few of my friends have been as heroic as I, and we form a little colony which is quite able to dispense with the crowd.

I fear I shall be obliged to return to Paris a little after the opening of the Senate, to thunder forth all my eloquence on the bird-organ law, of which I am the advocate. I have written to M. Rouher to offer him peace, and to give him the opportunity to escape my eloquence. Will he accept it? If he is reckless enough to desire war, will you wait until the end of January to see me, and will you grant me a kind reception on New Year’s day? In the event that the affair turns towards peace, I shall ask you this in February. Good-bye, dear friend. In the meantime, I send you my best and tenderest wishes.

CCLXXXVII

CANNES, _February 20, 1866_.

DEAR FRIEND: You charge me with indolence, you, who are its personification! You, who live in Paris and discuss affairs with civilised folk, should keep me informed of what is done and said in the great city. You never tell me enough.

Is it true that crinoline is no longer in fashion, and that between the gown and the skin nothing is worn but the chemise? If this is so, shall I recognise you when I arrive in Paris? I recollect an old man who said to me when I was young, that on entering a drawing-room where there were some women without hoop-skirts and without powder, he supposed they were chamber-maids assembled in the absence of their mistresses. I am not sure that one can be a woman without crinoline.

I have allowed the address to go to vote without my presence, and it was not lost; but I shall be compelled to return soon on account of my bird-organs.[33] The question is not yet concluded, and it will be necessary a second time to display my eloquence, which exasperates me excessively.

Notwithstanding the loveliest weather in the world, I have by some means succeeded in catching cold, and when I have a cold I am always dangerously ill. Breathing with difficulty ordinarily, now I do not breathe at all. Except for this I am better than I was last year. To be sure, I do absolutely nothing, which is a prime factor in being well. I brought a lot of work with me, but have not even unpacked it.

You have not mentioned Ponsard’s play.[34] He has retained the tradition of the Corneille versification, somewhat emphatic, but broad, generous, and sincere. I fancy that fashionable society will go into ecstasies over this, as they go into ecstasies over the knowledge of M. Babinet and the sermons of the abbé Lacordaire, buying a cat in a bag, just as soon as they are persuaded that it is the proper thing. I fear that persons in skin-tight trousers, with dog-ears, and reciting verse, do not excite me to raptures of admiration.

I have just read a little book by my friend, M. de Gobineau, on the religions of Asia. You shall judge of it on my return, if you do not prefer to read it before then. It is a very strange and curious book. In Persia it seems that there are scarcely any Mussulmans left, new religions are being made, and, as elsewhere, they are mere imitations of ancient superstitions which were believed to be a thousand times dead, and which suddenly reappear. You will be interested in a sort of prophetess, very pretty and eloquent, who was burned several years ago.

My lord, the bishop of Orleans, passed through Cannes the other day, and called to see M. Cousin, whose interest he asked in behalf of M. de Champagny. I supposed that my president, Troplong, would try to succeed M. Dupin, but he stands in awe, apparently, of our burgraves, who, indeed, would be delighted to play him a mean trick. I hear mention of Henri Martin and Amédée Thierry, both of whom are as capable of extolling M. Dupin as I of playing the double-bass. If I am in Paris, I will vote as you advise me. I expect to be in Paris early next month. What is now said and done seems to me daily to be more stupid. We are more ridiculous than they were in the middle ages. Good-bye, dear friend.

CCLXXXVIII

PARIS, _April 9, 1866_.

DEAR FRIEND: Is it not a fatality that you should be leaving just as I arrive! Fortunately, you will return soon. I have been here since Saturday night, painfully ill. When I left I could scarcely breathe, and the journey made me still more wheezy. We had a terrible storm last night, which I hope will do me a little good. I shiver at your description of that damp town of ----, and at the thought of those chilly corridors of which you give such a dismal picture. Try to wrap yourself in all your furs, and to leave the chimney-corner as seldom as possible, and then only on sunny days. I have become so sensitive to the cold, or, rather, the cold does me so much harm, that I can fancy hell in no other aspect than as the compartment of the Bolge in Dante.

Happily, I am told crinoline is no longer fashionable, which allows your legs and the rest of your body to have a little protection. I went out yesterday for an hour, and saw a woman without any crinoline, but with such extraordinary skirts that I was horrified. It seemed to me that she wore a flounced pasteboard skirt under a gown which she held up. It made a great deal of noise on the asphalt.

It is consistent with your habits to act the reverse of common mortals, and as the country will soon be charming, I presume you will return to Paris. Be kind enough, therefore, to advise me of your movements.

I am pondering and asking myself if I shall go to the Academy Thursday to be an aid or a hindrance, after the fashion of an Immortal. Between M. Henri Martin, M. Cuvillier-Fleury, and M. de Champagny, one does not know exactly what to do. The latter, however, is a little too clerical for me, and I bear him a grudge, moreover, for having written on Roman history in journalistic style. M. Guizot, apparently, is the reigning star. He wishes to make us swallow the entire _Journal des Savants_: M. Paradol, then M. de Sacy and M. Saint-Marc. At any rate, they have humour, and a great deal of intelligence. Have you read anything of Cuvillier-Fleury? If so, tell me your opinion of him. If you will give me a genuine reward besides, I will vote for whomsoever you may designate.

English novels, meaning modern ones, are beginning to bore me to death. They were our great resource at Cannes, where M. Murray, the well-known bookseller, sends boxes of books twice a week. Do you know of anything which will while away the time for a poor devil who dares not show his face out of doors after sunset?

Good-bye, dear friend. Think of me sometimes, and send me some news of yourself.

CCLXXXIX

PARIS, _June 24, 1866_.

What has become of you? The cholera, it seems, is very bad at Amiens. I do not know what is in store for us at the Luxembourg, and it may be that the Senate-Council, with which we are threatened, will oblige me to return here until the middle of the month.

To console myself, I have bought the twenty-seven volumes of the _Mémoires du XVIIIe Siècle_, which I shall have bound. Is there in them anything which you would like? Your Klincksieck has nothing that one asks for; I shall inquire of Vieweg, who may have, perhaps, what I want. Unfortunately, the edition of the _Mémoires de F. Auguste_, which was published in Leipzig, is in the hands of M. de Bismarck.

I was surprised to receive the book you returned to me. I was afraid that you had added it to those which you have already taken from me. When will you come and choose another? In spite of the heat, I am far from well.

You asked me, the other day, where I formed my acquaintance with the dialects of the Bohemians. I had so many things to say to you that I forgot to answer. I obtained it from M. Borrow; his book is one of the most curious that I have ever read. What he retails of the Bohemians is perfectly true, and his personal observations agree entirely with mine, except on one point. In his quality as a clergyman he might well have been mistaken, where, in my quality as a Frenchman and a layman I could make conclusive experiments. What is most singular is that this man, who has a gift for languages to the degree that he speaks the Cali dialects, has so little perspicacity that he is unable to see at the outset that in this dialect have remained many words foreign to the Spanish. He pretends that the roots only of Sanskrit words have been retained....

I like the odour of that perfume, but I like it less since I have known that the friend who gave it to you sees you so often.

CCXC

PALACE OF SAINT-CLOUD, _August 20, 1866_.

DEAR FRIEND: I received your letter last night. I thank you for your congratulations.[35] The thing astonished me as much as you. I say to myself, like the _Cocu_ imaginaire: Does one’s leg become more crooked, after all, or one’s shape less beautiful?

I beg your pardon for quoting lines from a play which you have not read because of its title.

You take a singular route to go to your friends in the land of the sea-monsters, but if you can have a little sunshine you will experience much pleasure in seeing the banks of the Loire. There is nothing in all France more typically French, and what is seen there, besides, can be found nowhere else. I recommend to you especially the Château of Blois, which has been well restored in the last few years. See, for my sake, the new church of Tours, restored. It is on the Rue Royale, on the right side coming from the station; I have forgotten the name of it. See also, in Tours, a house which is called, improperly, the House of the Executioner, and which is attributed to Tristan the Hermit, because of a sculptured girdle, the emblem of a widow, and which the ignorant take for a hangman’s rope. It is on the street of the Three Virgins, another distressing name.

We are having deplorable weather. Yesterday I took a long drive, and we were surprised by a terrific storm, which soaked me to the bones and gave me new cold. The water accumulated on the cushions, so that it was like being in a bath-tub. I think I shall be in Paris the last few days of this month, and set out again for Biarritz the beginning of September. Will you not come there when you leave the banks of the Loire?...

The emperor has entirely recovered and has resumed his usual occupations. We spend the days comfortably enough, considering the horrible weather, and without any formality. We dine in frock-coats, and every one does pretty much as he pleases.

I have received from Russia an enormous history of Peter the Great, compiled from a quantity of official documents, hitherto unpublished. I read and I paint whenever we are not walking or eating.

It seems to me that everything tends in the direction of peace. It is very evident that M. de Bismarck is a great man, and he is too well prepared for any one to quarrel with him. We shall have, perhaps, many bitter pills to swallow, and these we shall digest until we have needle-guns. It remains to be seen what the German parliament will do, and, if the follies which they commit will not cause them to lose their advantage. As for Italy, it is never even mentioned. Good-bye dear friend.

CCXCI

BIARRITZ, _September 24_.

I hope you may be enjoying better weather than we. Four days of the week we have rain; the others are stifling hot, accompanied by a horrible sirocco. Still, the sea is far more beautiful here than at Boulogne, and the figs and ortolans make it possible to sustain the burden of life.

I made, the other day, an interesting excursion into the mountains, and saw one of the most remarkable grottoes in existence. You pass beneath a great natural bridge, made of a single arch, as long as the Pont Royal; on one side you see a wall of rocks, and on the other a tunnel, natural also, and very long. For nature, less clever than the engineers, contrived to make her bridge lengthwise, and the tunnel is the extension of this. Under the tunnel, and perpendicular to the bridge, flows a limpid stream. The proportions of all this are gigantic. The air within is very cool, and one feels as if he were a thousand leagues from humanity. I will show you a sketch of it, made on horseback. This enchanting place, which is called simply Sagarramedo, is in Spain, and if it were in the suburbs of Paris some one would make a show place of it, charge fifty centimes admission and make his fortune.

In another cavern, a league’s distance from the first, but in France, we found about twenty smugglers, who sang some Basque airs in chorus, to the accompaniment of the galoubet. This is a small, shrill flageolet, which has in its tones something exceedingly wild and agreeable. The music is full of character, but mournful enough to drive the devil into the ground, like all the mountaineers’ music. As for the words, I understood only _viva emperatrica!_ of the last couplet.

We were guided to the place by a singular man, who has made a large fortune smuggling. He is the king of these mountains, and everybody is subject to his commands. Nothing could have been finer than to see the way he galloped among the rocks beside our column, which had great difficulty in following the beaten paths. He dashed over every obstacle, calling to his men in Basque, in French, and in Spanish, and never once making a false step. The empress had charged him to watch over the prince imperial, whom he made pass, him and his pony, over the most impossible routes that you may imagine, and watching over him as carefully as if he had been a bale of contraband goods. We rested for an hour in his home at San, where we were received by his daughters, who are well-bred persons, stylishly dressed, not in the least provincial, and differing from Parisians only in their pronunciation of the _r_, which for the Basques is always _r-r-r-h_.

We are expecting the armoured fleet; but the sea is so rough, that if it came we could not communicate with it. There are not many people at Biarritz, some startling costumes, and few pretty faces. Nothing could be uglier than the bathers with their black costumes and caps of oil-cloth.

I have been presented to the duc de Leuchtenberg, who is quite friendly. I discovered that he read Schopenhauer, believed in positive philosophy, and had a leaning towards socialism.

I expect to be in Paris early in October. Shall you not be there? I should be glad to see you before I go into winter quarters. I am growing scandalously stout, and my breathing is much better than in Paris.

Good-bye, dear friend. I have written a droll little thing, which may amuse you, if you should condescend to listen.

CCXCII

PARIS, _October 5, 1866_.

We are to be, then, like Castor and Pollux, who can never appear upon the same horizon! I returned several days ago. I have made a trip to the post-office, and return to pack my trunk for departure. I am obliged to go, for the first touch of frost is very disagreeable to feel, and I have begun to cough and strangle.

Besides the pleasure which would have been mine in seeing you, I had been promising myself that of reading you something which I had translated from the Russian. At Biarritz they were discussing, one day, the difficult situations in which one might find one’s self, as, for example Rodrigue between his papa and Chimène, Mademoiselle Camille between her brother and her Curiace. That night, having drunk tea which was too strong, I wrote about fifteen pages on a situation of this sort. The thing is very moral in reality, yet there are some details of which Monseigneur Dupanloup might disapprove. There is, also, a begging the question necessary for the development of the plot: two persons of different sex go to an inn; this has never been known, but it was necessary for my story, and while there they have a remarkable experience. Although written in great haste, it is not, I think, the worst thing I have ever done. I read it to the lady of the house.

At the same time there was also at Biarritz the grand duchess Marie, daughter of Nicolas, to whom I had been presented several years ago. We renewed our acquaintance. Shortly after my reading I received a visit from a policeman, saying he had been sent by the grand duchess. “What may I do for you?” “I have come from her imperial highness, to beg you to come to her house to-night with your novel.” “What novel?” “The one you read, the other day, to her Majesty.” I replied that I had the honour to be her Majesty’s jester, and that I could not work for any one else without her permission. I hastened at once to relate the thing to her. I expected the result would be, at the very least, a war with Russia, and I was no little mortified not only to receive permission to go, but even to go that evening to the grand duchess, to whom had been given the policeman as factotum. Nevertheless, to console myself, I wrote the grand duchess a pretty energetic letter, and announced my visit. I was on the way to carry my letter to her house; there was a high wind, and in a secluded by-street I met a woman who was in danger of being blown into the sea by her skirts, into which the wind had entered. She was in the greatest bewilderment, blinded and dazed by the noise made by her crinoline, and all the other tumult. I rushed to her assistance. It was with the greatest difficulty that I succeeded in giving her any effective aid, and then only recognized the grand duchess. The windstorm saved her from a number of little epigrams. She was, moreover, quite friendly with me, and gave me some excellent tea and cigarettes; for she smokes, as nearly all Russian ladies do. Her son, the duke of Leuchtenberg, is a handsome fellow, with the manner of a German student. He seemed to me, as I mentioned before, a good-natured chap, affable, with a tendency slightly Republican and Socialistic, and a Nihilist in the bargain, like the _Bazarof_ of Tourguenieff; for in these days princes do not consider the Republic a form of government progressive enough for their tastes.

Good-bye, dear friend. Write to me here, but do so immediately. I do not release you from sending me news of yourself. What say you to the spectacle of a flood? You have had the experience, with all its variations. One of my friends scarcely touched food for two days, in the anxiety of seeing his house dissolve beneath him, like a lump of sugar. Again good-bye.

CCXCIII

CANNES, _January 3, 1867_.

I received your letter with great remorse. For a long time I have wanted to write to you, but, in the first place, an uncertainty as to your abode is a great vexation. You are always on the wing, and no one knows where to catch you. In the second place, you have never replied to a long letter, written with great care, which I sent to you. Moreover, you can not imagine how the time passes in a place like this, where it never rains, and where the principal thing to do is to warm one’s self in the sun, or to paint trees and rocks.

I brought with me books for work, but as yet I have done nothing but read and take notes from a history of Peter the Great, about which I should like some day to write an article for the _Journal des Savants_. The great man was a downright savage, who used to get horribly tipsy, and committed an error against good taste, concerning which I found you very severe when you used to study Greek literature. For all that, he was without question a man in advance of his age. I should like to say all this some day to persons as full of prejudice as yourself.

As for the story about which I told you, I have said that I would read it to you when I have the pleasure of seeing you once more. I am not thinking of having it published. As there is in this work nothing favourable to the temporal power of the Pope, I suspect that it might not meet with a cordial reception. Are you not touched and humiliated by the profound stupidity of the present time? Everything that is said both for and against the temporal power is so silly and absurd, that I blush for my century....

Another thing that enrages me is the manner in which the proposition for the reorganization of the army has been received. All well-born young persons are dying of terror at the thought of being called upon at a moment’s notice to fight for their country, and say that these vulgar occupations should be left to the Prussians. Try to imagine what will remain of the French nation if she should come to lose her military courage!

I am reading the novel of my friend Madame de Boigne.[36] It is pitiful. She is a woman of much intelligence, who lays bare her own defects, and criticises them with excessive bitterness, but who still persists in them. She passed more than thirty years without saying a word to me of this novel, and in her will she ordered its publication. It was as great a surprise to me as if I had learned that you had just published a treatise on geometry.

Although the subject is not an agreeable one, I must tell you something of my health. I am becoming more and more short-breathed. Sometimes I feel as robust as a Turk. I take long walks, and it seems to me that I am as well as when we used to tramp through our woods together. The sun goes down, my chest becomes inflated, I suffocate and the slightest exertion is very painful. The singular thing is, that I am no worse. I am even better in a horizontal position than when standing or sitting.

Good-bye, dear friend. I wish you health and prosperity.

CCXCIV

PARIS, _Thursday, April 4, 1867_.

DEAR FRIEND: Here I am, at last, in Paris, but more dead than alive. I have not written, because I was too melancholy, and had only doleful things to tell you of myself and of this sublunary world. You will find me very miserable, but happy to see you again.

Friday morning, if the weather be fine, we might walk together to the Museum of the Louvre. I dare hardly go out, I have such a dread of the cold, but I am ordered to take exercise.

I send you the eighth volume of Guizot, which will entertain you. The dull weather depresses me, and makes me _much_ worse. I hope you are still in great prosperity.

My house is undergoing improvements, and I am reduced to living in my salon, which is as gloomy as a prison. Come and cheer me up. You shall carry away all the books you like, and I shall not require you to leave me anything as security.

Good-bye, I shall see you soon, I hope.

CCXCV

PARIS, _Friday, April 30, 1867_.

DEAR FRIEND: I am very sorry to know that you are surrounded by sick persons. This makes me fear that you have no thought of me, who am worse than ever in this bad weather. Will you not come and take care of me one of these days?

I went, nevertheless, to the Exposition, and was not at all carried away with it. It is true that it was pouring rain, and impossible to see the amusements, which I am told are in the garden. I saw some exquisite Chinese articles, too dear for my purse; and some Russian rugs, all sold.

You will have to take me there one of these fine mornings, and guide me in my acquisitions. You seem to be enchanted with this bazaar; perhaps your enthusiasm will kindle mine.

The dull, rainy weather is very injurious to me. I dare not go out, and I live like a bear. I am dying to go to see you some evening, but I am convinced that I should be compelled to spend the night on the first step of your stairway.

Do you know of any amusing book to read at night? While waiting for something better, I am writing for the _Journal des Savants_ an article on the princess Sophie, sister of Peter the Great. I do not know if it would interest you. I will read it to you next time I see you.

CCXCVI

_Wednesday, June 26, 1867._

DEAR FRIEND: Would it not have been better to bring me your flowers yourself? You have pained me greatly in sending them. I am still very ill; but how can I get well in such weather?

Read Sainte-Beuve’s speech;[37] it will amuse you. It is impossible for one to be more witty. But if he really wishes what he asked for, he has taken the best means of being refused. I do not know what will be the result of his interchange of epigrams with M. Lacaze, but I fear it will end in a duel. It is impossible to conceive of the expression of hatred and profound scorn on his face as he read, for he read his speech, which was somewhat detrimental to its effect.

I have sent you my condolences on the loss of your purse at the Exposition. Return the compliment, for I have left mine in a carriage. I am inquiring everywhere for tickets for the ceremony of July 1st. I am unwilling to take any but the best places for you, and I can find none.

CCXCVII

PARIS, _Sunday, June 30, 1867_.

DEAR FRIEND: Here are two tickets for to-morrow’s ceremony.[38] They deserve a rare tip, for I had a great deal of trouble in procuring them. I send them to you in haste. Try not to be ill. It will be terribly hot!

CCXCVIII

_Friday, July 5, 1867._

DEAR FRIEND: I am delighted that you enjoyed yourself. I was afraid of the heat, and of the weight of my harness. You looked for me in vain. I did not go. Come soon, and tell me the beautiful things you saw, and give me your opinion of the sultan and the princes, who had the privilege of gazing on you for three hours.

I think that this fusillade[39] will injure our affairs, which were progressing well. It is a great pity.

CCXCIX

PARIS, _July 27, 1867_.

DEAR FRIEND: Thanks for your letter. I continue so ill, that I did not write to you at once, hoping to give you more hopeful news of myself; but no matter what I do and what I swallow, I still have this horrible cold. I shall not give you the details of my ills, but you may be sure that I am overcome by them. I hope you will sympathise with me. I neither sleep nor eat. I envy you these two faculties, which you possess with many others.

I congratulate you on having met the sultan for so long a time. Did he exhibit more amiability towards your sex than he did in Paris? They tell me that he gave great dissatisfaction at the opera. The pasha of Egypt was much more gracious. He made two visits to Mademoiselle ----, which I dare not describe to you, although they were curious. He has become reconciled (I am speaking of the pasha) with his cousin Mustapha, but it has been impossible to have them drink coffee together, each one being persuaded that it would be too dangerous on account of the rapid progress of the science of chemistry.

If you had been in Paris you would have seen something very beautiful which was presented to me. It is a brooch in the form of a fleur-de-lis shield, containing a miniature portrait of Marie Antoinette, painted in Vienna, probably, before her marriage, and given by her to the princess de Lamballe. There was once in the back of the brooch a lock of hair, but it has been removed. After a fine show of resistance to the temptation, I yielded, and sent it promptly to her Majesty, who is making a collection of objects which belonged to Marie Antoinette. This will be, assuredly, one of her prettiest souvenirs; besides which, it is said to be absolutely authentic, and was worn for a long time by Madame de Lamballe. These sad antiquities fill me with horror, but it is vain to dispute about tastes.

Madame ---- is still making a great scandal, and openly. I am sorry that I am not at liberty to write you all that she says and does. It is asserted that in Italy are two other wives of ministers more extravagantly wild than she....

I think you might have been a little more polite, and borrowed my proofs from me. Nothing is more painful to an author than neglect of this sort. August 1st, a second article appeared, and you will be compelled to fortify yourself against three or four others. If you could invent some euphemism to explain to the reader the secret of Mentchikof’s influence with Peter the Great, it would be an immense favour to me.

Read also, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, M. Collin’s article on trades unions (it is by M. Libri), and a letter of M. d’Haussonville to prince Napoleon, which is highly calculated to spoil his taste for newspaper polemical articles.

Sainte-Beuve continues quite ill. He is surrounded by numbers of women, like the sultan Saladin. You shall not persuade me that you are having at ---- any better weather than here--that is to say, continuous gusts of rain and wind.

When are you coming back? I need you very much, to tell me what is going on, and to help me bear my misfortunes in patience--something very difficult to do. The other night, when it was almost impossible for me to breathe, I read Luther’s Table-Talk. This big man pleases me, with all his prejudices and his hatred of the devil. Good-bye, dear friend.

CCC

PARIS, _September 6, 1867_.

DEAR FRIEND: I received your letter, which gave me much pleasure. The dampness of the climate where you are must be greatly ameliorated, I fancy, by this excessive heat. As for me, I find myself much better for it, and I am breathing, not with full lung-power, but more easily than I have done in a long time. However, I had the courage to refuse the gracious invitation which the empress renewed as she was leaving.[40] I do not feel sure enough of myself to stand any exposure to the danger of illness, and although I was assured of the best of care, I thought it prudent and discreet to take no risks. Perhaps, if the warm weather continues, I may experiment with my strength by spending a few days in the country at my cousin’s. It may be that the change of air will be good for me, and there is every indication that the crowds of foreigners who are thronging Paris are injuring our atmosphere.

I visited the Exposition the other day, and saw the Japanese women, who pleased me uncommonly. They have a complexion of cream-colour, of an agreeable shade. So far as I could judge by the drapery of their gowns, they have legs as slender as the sticks of a chair, which is too bad. As I observed them, along with the crowd of loungers surrounding them, I thought to myself that European women would not make so good an impression before a Japanese audience. Imagine yourself on exhibition thus at Yeddo, and a grocer of prince Satsuma saying: “I should like to know whether that hump on the back of this lady’s gown is really growing there.” Speaking of humps, they are no longer worn at all, which proves that they did not grow there; for all women found themselves at the same instant in the fashion.

I am reading an abominable book by Madame ---- aimed against M. S., whom she calls M. T.; it is the very limit of all that is indecent. For all that, it shows evidence of ability of a certain sort....

I have written for the _Moniteur_ an article remarkable for the amenity of its style, on the subject of an amusing Spanish chronicle. I will lend it to you one of these days, provided that you will return it. You will see therein how people lived in Spain and France in the fifteenth century.

Good-bye. Keep well; do not take cold, and write me some word of yourself.

CCCI

PARIS, _September 27, 1867_.

DEAR FRIEND: What has become of you? It is an age since I heard from you. I have just done something reckless: I spent three days at my cousin’s home in the country, near Arpajon, and I feel very little the worse for it, although the country seemed to me cold and damp. I do not believe, however, that it is warm anywhere, nowadays. I suppose that at ---- you are enveloped in constant fogs.

I spend my time as well as I can, in absolute solitude. I am seized sometimes with the desire to travel, but the impulse does not last long enough to amount to anything. Moreover, I am terribly depressed. I believe something serious is the matter with my eyes. I wish, and at the same time I dread, going to consult Liebreich; yet, if I should lose my sight, what would become of me?

In society there is a certain prince Augustine Galitzin, who has become a convert to Catholicism, and who is not very proficient in Russian. He has translated a novel by Tourguenieff, the title of which is _Smoke_. It is now coming out in _Le Correspondent_, a clerical newspaper, some of the capital of which is furnished by the prince. Tourguenieff has asked me to review the proofs. Now, in this novel are some rather lively situations, which are the despair of prince Galitzin; for instance, something unheard-of: A Russian princess is in love, which is made worse by adultery. He skips the passages which shock him too deeply, and I reinstate them in the text. He is sometimes over-sensitive, as you shall see. The great lady condescends to visit her lover in a hotel, at Baden. She enters the room, and the chapter concludes. The story is resumed in the Russian original as follows: “Two hours later, Litvinof was alone on his divan.” The neo-Catholic has translated it thus: “An hour later, Litvinof was in his _room_.” You see it is much more moral, because to suppress an hour is to diminish the sin by half. Then, _room_, instead of _divan_, is much more virtuous, a divan being associated with criminal acts. I, inflexible in carrying out my orders, have reinstated the two hours and the divan, but the chapters in which they occur have not been published in _Le Correspondent_ of this month. I suppose the respectable people who edit it have exercised a strict censorship. I am greatly amused by it. As the story continues, there is a delightful scene, in which the heroine tears up some point lace, which is a much more serious matter than the divan. I am waiting to see what they will do with this.

Good-bye, dear friend. Let me hear from you. I am terrified by the rapidity with which winter is approaching.

CCCII

PARIS, _Monday night_, _October 28, 1867_.

You speak of vegetating. Indeed, that is the sort of life one would wish to lead nowadays, but the age is one of movement. Human vegetables are as unfortunate as those which live at the foot of Etna. From time to time upon them falls a deluge of fire, which usually annihilates them by its sulphurous vapours.

Do you not consider it calamitous that Pius IX and Garibaldi, both fanatics, should, by their obstinacy, turn everything into confusion? As an evidence of the morals of the age is the reply of those who disapprove the sending of our troops to Rome, when they are reminded of the treaty of September 15th: “What matters a treaty? M. de Bismarck does not observe them.” I should like to steal a watch from one of them, and then say that there have been precedents of watches being stolen. The most deplorable feature of the whole matter is, that we are pledging ourselves anew, for I know not how long a time, to protect the Pope, who shows not the slightest gratitude towards us....

_Le Correspondent_ has yielded, and is publishing the continuation of Tourguenieff’s novel, without, however, permitting the interview between Litvinof and Irène to last more than one hour. I think I told you about it. Are you reading it? _Le Correspondent_ certainly goes to ----, where you are. Anyway, I will give you the novel on your return.

I am still ill, breathing painfully, and at night not breathing at all. This sudden death of M. Fould has grieved me very much. It was, however, as easy as one could wish; but why so sudden? He wrote eighteen letters the same morning of his death, and two hours before retiring seemed perfectly well. He had not made the least movement after lying down, and his features bore no evidences of contraction. His death was precisely the same as that of Mr. Ellice; “a visitation of God” is what the English call it.

I am expecting to start early in November. I am urged to go, in order to escape colds, which are so difficult to avoid in Paris. I am finishing an article for the _Moniteur_, on a Greek manuscript, and shall depart just as soon as it is completed.

Good-bye, dear friend. I hope you will come back before I go. Abandon those hideous fogs, and take care of your health. Again, good-bye....

CCCIII

PARIS, _November 8, 1867_.

DEAR FRIEND: I send you a word in haste, written in the midst of the errand which I am compelled to do. I leave to-morrow for Cannes, seriously ill; but there I hope to live in sunlight and warmth. Here we have it cold and almost frosty. I no longer go out at night, and never put my nose out of doors except when the temperature becomes a little milder.

I do not know how long I shall be able to stay away; it depends somewhat on the Pope, on Garibaldi, and on M. de Bismarck. Like every one else, I am more or less in the hands of these gentlemen. I know nothing more shameful than this affair of Garibaldi. If ever a man was under obligation to commit suicide, it is he, assuredly. What is even more lamentable is the fact that the Pope is quite convinced that he is under no obligation to us, and that it was Heaven which managed everything for his sake. Good-bye, dear friend....

CCCIV

CANNES, _December 16, 1867_.

DEAR FRIEND: I was very anxious about you, when I was relieved by the arrival of your letter. You have guessed that these many changes of weather through which we have passed, have done me no good. In the last twenty-four hours we have even had snow, to the enormous astonishment of the urchins and curs of the place. Such a thing is unprecedented in twenty years. Nothing could be more amusing than the amazement depicted on the faces which had never seen this phenomenon from a nearer range than the Alps. Everybody expected to see the flowers, orange-trees, and even the olive-trees, destroyed; but they all stood it remarkably well, and only the flies have been killed.

For several days we have had a return of fine weather, and my breathing begins to be somewhat less difficult. I am always at the mercy of every change of temperature, and there is no barometer to which I am not superior in the accuracy of my predictions.

I am greatly alarmed by the political situation; in the general tone of the journals and of the orators, I find something suggestive of 1848. There are strange freaks of anger, without any apparent causes. All nerves are tense. After spending his whole life amid political struggles, M. Thiers is seized with nervous excitement because a lawyer of Marseilles repeats platitudes deserving of nothing more than a smile. The most unfortunate feature has been the attitude of M. Rouher, who wishes to out-Herod Herod, and who has given utterance to sentiments obnoxious to politics--a thing from which all ministers ought to abstain.

I am discontented with everybody, beginning with Garibaldi, who does not understand his trade. To go to Caprera, after having murdered several hundred simpletons, seems to me the very limit of mortification for the advocates of revolution, and the English noblemen who took this creature for something more than a mountebank.

What shall I say to you of the politics of M. Ollivier and _tutti quanti_? It is useless for them to express themselves in elegantly turned phraseology, and to assert that they are profoundly convinced; they impress me as second-rate actors who imitate the rôles of their betters, in such a fashion as to deceive no one. We become smaller day by day. It is only M. de Bismarck who is a really great man.

By the way, could it be true that he has spent his private fortune? I consider the purchase of the journals as highly probable. But, as M. de Bismarck will not send his receipts to M. de Kerveguen, I fancy these gentlemen will come out of the affair honourably.

I see nothing worth reading but the _Histoire de Pierre le Grand_, by M. Oustisalef. I have just sent to the _Journal des Savants_ a long article, full of tormenting details, etc. It is on the destruction of the Muscovite guards. Good-bye....

CCCV

CANNES, _January 5, 1868_.

DEAR FRIEND: Pardon my delay in replying to your letter. I have been, and am still, extremely ill. The cold, which has penetrated even so far as this, is very harmful to me. It is said that in Paris it is much more severe, and that you have no cause to envy Siberia. I am sometimes, the greater part of the day, unable to breathe. There is no sharp pain in this, but a discomfort of the most wearisome kind, which reacts severely on the nerves. You know me well enough to understand how well I endure all this.

Moreover, I am suffering great anxiety on account of my poor friend Panizzi, who is dangerously ill in London. The latest news was somewhat comforting, but there is still little ground for reassurance: He is discouraged about himself, which is always a bad symptom in sick people.

Amidst all my sorrows, I am killing time as I may. I send to-day to the _Journal des Savants_ the end of the first part of _Pierre le Grand_--for there are first and second parts in this, as in the novels of Ponson de Terrail--and to the _Moniteur_, a long critique on Poushkin. All this you will see in its proper time and place.

I am now reading a book which is too long, and badly written, but the author of which seems to be honest, and describes what he has seen and heard. One must pass over his reflections, for in these he is a little silly. The book is Dixon’s _New America_. He has seen the Mormons, and, what is still more curious, the Republic of Mount Lebanon. This and Fenianism give one an idea of America. Decidedly Talleyrand’s epigram defines it exactly.

Good-bye, dear friend, I wish you health and happiness.

CCCVI

CANNES, _February 10, 1868_.

DEAR FRIEND: I am distressed to learn of the death of M. D. I saw him at ----, I do not know how many years ago. He was devotedly fond of you, and while the death of friends of eighty years should be expected at any moment, still it always comes as a thunder-clap. One of the greatest sorrows of those who live to be aged is to lose our friends day by day, and to realise that we are more and more alone in the world....

For my own part, my thoughts are melancholy, and my mood gloomy. I have not yet succeeded in accustoming myself to suffering, and it irritates me, which gives me two ills instead of one. I think I shall stay here at least until the end of this month, in which case I have some hope of finding you in Paris. I am delighted that my essay on Poushkin did not bore you. The best thing about it is that I wrote it without having the works of Poushkin by me. The quotations I gave are verses that I committed to memory in the time of my fervour for all things Russian.

There are many Russians here, and I had charged one of my friends to borrow a volume of miscellaneous poems, if there was one in the Muscovite colony. He inquired of an uncommonly pretty woman, who, instead of poems, sent me a big piece of fish from the Volga, and two birds from the same country, all cooked a few metres from the north pole. It was rather good. Judging from the slice sent to me, the fish must have been a jolly fellow from five to six feet in length. This lady, who is called Madame Voronine, has a charming head. Her husband has the appearance of a veritable Calmuc. At first he refused the hand of the lady. He shot himself, the ball missed, and for his trouble he was made to marry her.

As for English, men and women, never have there been such a lot of them, with impossible hair and toilettes, with red hair and overcoats lined with grebe skins, and with parasols. During the last two weeks the parasols have been more serviceable than the furs, for the weather is magnificent, and the sun hot as in June. Among other extraordinary Englishmen is the duke of Buccleugh, who has a horn in the middle of his forehead. His son shows a disposition to follow his example. Do not imagine that I am speaking metaphorically; it is a real horn growing on the cranium, and it will end, I fear, by playing them a bad trick.

I told you that I had _Smoke_, bound in a volume expressly for you. I might send it to you if you wished it; but I believe that I recall your having taken home the numbers of the _Correspondent_ in which it is found. It is one of the best things that M. Tourguenieff has ever done.

The discussion on the press is disgusting to me. Every one tells too many lies, and not an idea is heard that has not been already expressed twenty times in better terms. It seems to me that the level of intelligence is rapidly sinking lower, like that of honesty. It is indeed sad.

Yesterday I met one of my friends returning from Mentana. He told me that the Garibaldians were thoroughly whipped; that they were a singular mixture of abominable riff-raff and of the flower of the aristocracy.

Good-bye, dear friend. Take good care of yourself, and do not forget me.

CCCVII

MONTPELLIER, _April 20, 1868_.

DEAR FRIEND: Before coming here I was so ill that I lost all courage; it was impossible for me to think, and yet I was under the strongest necessity to write. I learned by chance that in Montpellier there was a physician who treated asthma by a new method, and I resolved to try it. During the five days since I began the treatment it seems to me that my condition has improved, and the physician encourages me to be hopeful.

Every morning I am placed in an iron cylinder, which, I must confess, looks like one of those monuments of M. de Rambuteau. Within is a comfortable easy-chair, and apertures with windows, which admit light enough to read. An iron door is closed, and the air in the cylinder is them compressed by means of a steam-engine. After a few seconds you feel as if needles were sticking in your ears, but, gradually, you become accustomed to the sensation. What is more important is that you begin to breathe with marvellous ease. At the end of a half hour I fall asleep, notwithstanding the fact that I have brought with me the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. I have already taken four of these compressed-air baths, and feel that I am perceptibly better. The physician who treats me, and who has none of the characteristics of a charlatan, assures me that my case is not hopeless, and promises to cure me with about fifteen baths or so.

I hope I may see you soon in Paris. I regret my absence from the discussion which will take place on the subject of the medical theses. Have you read the letter of abbé Dupanloup? The soul of Torquemada has taken refuge in his body, and if we do not look out, he will burn us all at the stake. I fear that the Senate on this occasion will say and do everything possible to make itself ridiculous and odious. You can have no idea of how afraid of the devil, nowadays, are those old warriors who have been through such a multitude of dangers. I do not know if Sainte-Beuve will be in a condition to speak, as the papers announce; I doubt it, and, besides, I am uncertain whether he will attack the question from the proper position;--I mean, in such a way as to avert the bombshell. His business is to speak out his mind, without regard to consequences, as he has already done on the occasion of Renan’s book. All these things irritate and torment me.

We are having admirable weather, but the natives are bewailing it bitterly, for they have had no rain for a year. The dry weather, however, does not hinder the leaves from growing, and the country is magnificent.

Unfortunately, I am detained indoors all the morning, and seldom have a chance to walk. There is a fair in progress under my windows. Opposite me they are exhibiting a giantess, in a satin gown which she raises to show her legs. Their diameter is almost that of your waist.

I will bring you the translation of _Smoke_. I have begun an essay on Tourguenieff, but do not know if I shall have the strength to finish it here. Nothing is more difficult than to work on a hotel diet. Good-bye, dear friend.

CCCVIII

PARIS, _June 16, 1868_.

... I suppose you are having about the same weather that we are enjoying--that is to say, perfectly lovely, and that you are no longer suffering from excessive dampness, which is the unfortunate feature of P. Here, the early summer is ravishing. I went, day before yesterday, to the Bois de Boulogne, where I saw the most stunning costumes. I met one very beautiful woman, dressed in an extraordinary fashion, and whose hair was a lovely gold-colour. I could have sworn that she was a young woman from the rue de Breda, but I came to recognise her as the wife of a general. Her hair formerly was a dark chestnut. Customs are making singular progress.

A well-known society man was living in marital relations with the wife of another man. Returning to his apartment one day, he found her there with a third man. Upon this, he went to the husband, and said to him: “I know that you wish to have proofs of criminal intercourse, in order that you may obtain a divorce from your wife. I bring you these proofs.” He left with him a package of letters, and they separated, with expressions of mutual esteem. It does not appear that he has been expelled from his club, or excluded from any salon to which he has had access.

M. Tourguenieff has just sent me a very short, but very pretty novel, entitled _The Brigadier_. It is now being translated, and if the proofs are sent to me, I will share them with you. English novels are getting to be so horribly dull that I can not take to them. Here, it seems that there is no one but M. Penson de Terrail, but his stories are too short.

I expect to go to London by the end of the month. I hope to see you in Hastings and in Paris, towards the end of July. Good-bye, dear friend.

CCCIX

CHÂTEAU DE FONTAINEBLEAU, _August 4, 1868_.

DEAR FRIEND: I have been here about a fortnight, feeling tolerably well, and finding absolute idleness good for body and mind. Our last walk left me a sweet memory. Is it so with you? Here, I walk a little, read less, and breathe fairly well. It is a pleasure to look at the sky and the trees.

There is no one at the château, or, rather, not more than thirty persons, of whom the only outsiders, besides myself, are several cousins of the empress, both ladies and gentlemen, and very agreeable people, whom I met in Madrid.

I kept for you a copy of the second edition of _Smoke_. On my return to Paris, in a week, I think, I will leave it at your house, or, if you prefer, I will send it.

I brought with me my materials for work; but as one is never certain of having an hour to himself, I have accomplished nothing at all. I made a copy of a portrait of _Diana of Poitiers_, by Primatice. She is represented as Diana holding a quiver, and it is evident that she has posed, for from head to foot everything shows the portrait. If I dare say so, there results even from an examination of the legs, that she wore her garters above the knee, after the fashion of the time. It is no longer the fashion now (so I have been told). I will show it to you, for this portrait has an historical value.

Good-bye. It is now the hour for dining. I envy you the little fish that you are eating, perhaps, at this very moment. Be so good as to tell me what is that high rock at Boulogne, near the quay. It seemed to me a monstrosity.

CCCX

PARIS, _September 2, 1868_.

While I was at Fontainebleau a strange incident happened to me. I had the idea of writing a novel for my hostess, whose hospitality I wished to repay in blarney. I did not have time to finish it; but on my return here I placed the word _End_ on it, and I fear it will be considered too long deferred. The strange part of it, however, is, that no sooner had I finished, than I began another novel. The recrudescence of this malady of my youth alarms me, because it so resembles a second childhood. Nothing of all this, be it understood, is for the public.

While I was in the château we read some marvellous modern novels, the authors of which were utterly unknown to me. It is in imitation of these gentlemen that this last novel is written. The scene occurs in Lithuania, a country perfectly familiar to you. Pure Sanskrit is spoken there. A great lady of the land, having gone to hunt, had the misfortune to be captured and carried away by a bear destitute of feeling. She became insane, but gave birth to a well-formed boy, who grows up and becomes charming, only he is subject to gloomy moods and inexplicable whimsicalities. He is married, and on his wedding-night eats his wife alive. You, who know all the tricks, since I disclose them to you, will guess immediately why. Yes, this gentleman is the illegitimate son of that unlicked cub. _Che invenzione prelibata._[41] Please tell me, I pray you, what you think of it.

I am not doing any too well, and am urged to renew the compressed-air baths at Montpellier. If you do not return to Paris before the 1st of October, you will probably not find me there. I will leave you the novel _Smoke_, which I have had waiting for you for ages. I do not know what has become of the author. He was in Moscow recently, with gout, and a historical novel in the bargain.

I regret greatly not having visited the aquarium of which you tell me, when I passed through Boulogne. Nothing diverts me more than fish and sea flora.

I dined yesterday with Sainte-Beuve, who was very interesting. Although a great sufferer, he has a charming wit, and is, without doubt, one of the most agreeable conversationalists that I have ever heard. He is deeply alarmed at the progress made by the clericals, and takes the thing to heart. I think the danger does not come from that direction....

Good-bye, dear friend. Write to me, but do not write so loosely as to put but three words on a line. Tell me candidly your opinion on my invention of the bear.

CCCXI

PARIS, _Tuesday, September 29, 1868_.

DEAR FRIEND: The important thing is that the reading did not tire you. Is it possible that you did not guess at once how ill-bred that bear was? As I read, I saw plainly on your face that you did not admit my conception of the plot. I must then submit to yours. Do you believe the reader, who is less timorous than you, will accept this good-woman version, that it was a _glancé_? So, it was a mere glance of the bear which made this poor woman insane, and imparted to her son his sanguinary instincts? It shall be done as you wish. I have always been the better for your advice; but this time you have abused your privilege.

I shall leave for Montpellier next Saturday. I hope to say good-bye to you two or three times before then.

CCCXII

CANNES, _November 16, 1868_.

DEAR FRIEND: I have been, and am still, very ill. The compressed-air baths, which were so beneficial to me last spring, were powerless to cure a bronchial trouble which has succeeded my asthma, and is as harassing as the latter. For six weeks I have been coughing and choking; while the numerous drugs, which I take with much docility and resignation, do not produce sufficient effect to permit me to resume my ordinary course of life. I go out only on very warm days. I sleep badly, and spend my time entertaining the blue devils.... It is at night especially that I suffer and fret the most. If I am so poorly before the winter, what will become of me when the weather is really cold? This thought preoccupies me unpleasantly. For three or four days, however, I have felt a little less miserable.

During my nights of insomnia I made a careful copy of the _Trouveur de Miel_,[42] with the changes which you suggested, and which seem to me to improve the story. That the bear pushed his attacks to the point of marring an illustrious genealogy, remains doubtful. At the same time, intelligent persons like yourself will understand that a very serious accident must have occurred. I sent this new edition to M. Tourguenieff, that he might revise the local colour, concerning which I am in some perplexity, but the deuce of the thing is that neither he nor I have been able to find a single Lithuanian who knows his own language and country. I had some intention of sending this tale as a fête-day gift to the empress, but I have resisted the temptation, and have done wisely. God only knows what that bear would have become amidst the society at Compiègne.

The weather is only so-so--neither cold nor windy, but with very few really beautiful days. I have been here a fortnight. The rest of the time I have been at Montpellier, where I was horribly bored....

So poor Rossini is dead. They pretended that he had done a great deal of work, although he wished to publish nothing. Pecuniary considerations, which always had great weight with him, would have been reason enough for him to publish his work, if he had really composed anything. He was one of the wittiest men I have ever seen, and nothing more marvellous has ever been heard than the air from the _Barber of Seville_, as sung by him. No actor could compare with him.

The last year appears to have been a fatal one for great men. They say that Lamartine and Berryer are both seriously ill.

Good-bye, dear friend. Write to me, and lose no time in leaving the damp country where you are at present. There is no such thing as a warm house in the country.

If you know some amusing book, tell me what it is, I pray you.

CCCXIII

CANNES, _January 2, 1869_.

DEAR FRIEND: You have not, then, received a letter I sent to you last month at P. I fear that it has gone astray. I do not pretend, however, to justify myself altogether. If you only realised what a wretched and monotonous life I am leading, you would understand that it is hard enough to endure it without giving an account of it. The fact is, I am doing very badly. Not the least improvement! On the contrary, they have not even succeeded in giving me relief from the painful attacks which occur from time to time. The sky and sea are magnificent, and their influence, which formerly restored me to health, no longer has any effect. What must I do? I have no idea, but often I feel a great desire that it would end.

Your journey seems to me delightful, but I do not approve of your return through the Tyrol in the season you describe. You will meet with much snow; you will lose the skin from your cheeks, and you will see nothing remarkably beautiful. You had better take some other route, no matter which. Innspruck, or, rather, Innsbruck, is an exceedingly picturesque little town; but for one who has been to Switzerland, it is not worth the trouble of going out of one’s way; neither are the bronze statues in the cathedral. Trent alone, of all the places on your route, seems to me worthy of your interest.

Why should you not go to Sicily to see Etna, which is said to be at his pranks again? You are never sea-sick, and it is probable that boats leave Naples especially to view the spectacle. In about a week’s journey you will have been able to see Etna, Palermo, and Syracuse.

I have again revised _The Bear_, whom you know, and I have polished him up with some care. Many things in the story are changed for the better, I think. The title and the names are changed also. For persons with as little intelligence as you, the manners of that bear will always seem to be mysterious. But no matter how perspicacious one may be, one will never be able to decide anything to his disadvantage. An infinity of things remain unexplained in the story. Physicians tell me that plantigrades, more than any other beasts, are capable of intercourse with human beings; but such examples are rare, naturally, bears being not exactly attractive....

Where is the point of that discourse of M. de Nieuwerkerke mentioned in all the papers, and contradicted later? How stupid we are getting to be! Our progress in this is rapid. Did you have the curiosity to go to hear the discussion in the Hall of the Pré-aux-Clercs on marriage and heredity? They say that part of it was most amusing, and, on reflection, terrifying, when one considers the number of imbeciles and mad dogs running the streets. I am told that there are women who make speeches, and who are neither the least mad, or the least stupid. Such symptoms as these make me shudder. The people of this land are voluntarily blind.

Good-bye, dear friend. I wish you a happy New Year.

CCCXIV

CANNES, _February 23, 1869_.

Do not be offended with me, dear friend, if I do not write to you. I have no encouraging news to give you of myself, and what is the advantage of sending you bad reports? The fact is, I am still dangerously ill, and I now realise that my malady is incurable. I have tried I know not how many infallible remedies; I have been in the hands of three or four physicians of great skill, not one of whom has given me the slightest relief. I am mistaken. Some time ago, in Nice, I came across an unusually intelligent man, somewhat of a charlatan, perhaps, who gave me, without pay, some capsules, which relieved me from a very painful feeling of suffocation which caused me great distress every night. Now, I suffer from it in the morning, but with less violence, and the attacks do not last so long. As for the bronchitis, which is the obstinate feature of my disease, it is well established.

Suffering and sad as I am, I have not the strength to read, and I have, besides, hardly any books. These past days I have read with interest the _Mémoires d’un Paysan Écossais_, who by dint of intelligence and application became a man of letters, a professor of geology, and a celebrated man. Unfortunately, he cut his throat not long ago, hard work having, without doubt, affected his mind. Hugh Miller is his name.

I think you will find my _Bear_ more presentable under his new form. Whenever I am able to paint I make illustrations for the story, so that when I return to Paris I may present it to the empress. Do not imagine that I am representing all the scenes--that one, for example, in which the bear forgets himself.

Good-bye, dear friend. I regret for your sake that you will not return to Rome this year. Everything, it seems to me, is going wrong. There is no longer any Spain; soon there will be no Holy See. The loss will be more or less serious according to one’s point of view. But it is something which should be seen once (like many other things), in order that one may suffer no temptations nor regrets. Good-bye....

CCCXV

CANNES, _March 19, 1869_.

DEAR FRIEND: I have been very ill. I am now convalescent, very weak still, but out of all danger, so they tell me. It was an acute attack of bronchitis which aggravated my chronic bronchitis. For four or five days my life was in danger, but now I am up. I walk about in my room, and will be allowed soon to walk in the sunshine.

Good-bye, dear friend. Health and prosperity.

CCCXVI

CANNES, _April 23, 1869_.

DEAR FRIEND: I shall leave here day after to-morrow. I am in pretty poor plight, but I am obliged to leave this place. My cousin, in whose home I live, is dead, and his poor widow has no one with her. I am still very weak, but think I am able to endure the trip. I shall notify you as soon as I arrive, and hope to find you in good health. Good-bye, dear friend.

CCCXVII

PARIS, _Sunday, May 2, 1869_.

DEAR FRIEND: I have been in Paris several days, but I was so exhausted from the journey, and so ill, that I had not the courage to write to you. Come to see me, and console me. Good-bye.

CCCXVIII

PARIS, _May 4, 1869_.

I am distressed that you did not wait two minutes. You did not allow them to tell me, and contented yourself by returning my book, and this you call a visit to a sick man! Your charity was easily satisfied. But it does not count; besides, I am a little better, and need you to go to the Exposition with me, where I have no desire to see daubs and nudities.

You shall be my guide. Do you remember the time when I was yours? Tell me what day will suit you. Good-bye, dear friend.

CCCXIX

PARIS, _Saturday, June 12, 1869_.

DEAR FRIEND: This dull weather, with its alternations of heat and cold, worries me and does me great harm; besides, I am in a beastly humour. The uproar that takes place every night on the boulevards, which reminds me of the fine times of 1848, contributes no little to my melancholy, and makes me feel, with Hamlet, that “man delights me not, nor woman neither.”

What afflicts me the most in all this sad business, is its profound stupidity. This people, which calls itself, and believes that it is, the most intellectual on earth, expresses its desire to enjoy a Republican form of government by demolishing the stands where poor people sell newspapers. They shriek, _Vive la Lanterne!_ and break the street-lamps. It is enough to make one hide his face. The danger is that there is for stupidity a sort of emulation, as for everything else, and between the Chambers and the Government, God only knows what the result will be.

I spend my time deciphering letters of the duke of Alba and of Philip II, which the empress gave me. Both of them wrote like cats. I am beginning to read Philip II, easily enough; but his captain-general is still very troublesome. I have just read one of his letters to his august master, written a few days after the death of count Egmont, in which he pities the fate of the countess, who has not a loaf of bread left, after having had a dowry of ten thousand florins. Philip II has an intricate and tedious way of saying the simplest things. It is very difficult to divine his meaning, and it seems to me that his constant intention is to confuse his reader and leave him to his own powers of initiation. The two make the most detestable pair of men that ever existed, and neither of them, unfortunately, was hanged, which is nothing to the credit of Providence.

I have also received from England a curious book, in which it is claimed that _Jeanne la Folle_ was not mad, but heretical, and that, on this account, papa, mamma, her husband, and her son all concerted to keep her in prison, and from time to time, to have her suffer a taste of torture. You shall read it, if you like; the book is at your service.

I have nothing encouraging to tell you of my health, which is not flourishing; a little better, it may be, than before I came. Nevertheless, I cough constantly, and can neither eat nor sleep.

Good-bye, dear friend. Write to me soon.

CCCXX

PARIS, _June 29, 1869_.

Thanks for your letter, dear friend. I am furious with poets and their pretended temperate climates. There is no spring, there is not even any summer. To-day, I ventured out of doors, and came back shivering. When I think that there are people who go to the woods, and even talk of love in this bitter weather, I am tempted to exclaim at the miracle. I say to myself that it is done every day. I am mistaken; it is impossible; it has never been done, even in the past.

I have finished the history of Princess Tarakanof, who was a saucy baggage, but she had a lover whose letters will amuse you. He suffered the fate of many mortals. I hope the _Journal des Savants_ penetrates as far as ----; if not, I will try to send it to you.

I am going, Thursday, to Saint Cloud, where I shall remain, probably, about a fortnight. I am not sure how I shall endure the life there, although I am, they tell me, almost the only guest invited. Besides, if I become ill I can in an hour be reinstated at my own fireside. I have told you something of the tribulations that I suffer here in my home, so that I will confess to you, it is not without joy that I am going away. Since your departure I have had two or three most tiresome scenes.

I am reading, with the greatest difficulty, Renan’s Saint Paul. Decidedly, he is a monomaniac as to scenery. Instead of sticking to his subject, he describes the woods and the meadows. If I were an abbé I should delight in writing an article for him to review. Have you read the harangue of our holy father, the Pope?...

I am confident that both in word and in deed we are about to be guilty of enormities for which there will not be enough baked apples in the world. Alas! this may end in harder projectiles! What a misfortune that the modern mind is so dull! Do you think it has ever been so before? There have been ages, doubtless, in which there were more ignorance, more barbarism, more absurdity, but now and then some brilliant genius appeared to make compensation; while to-day, it seems to me that all intellectuality is on a plane which is miserably low.

As I scarcely ever go out, I read a great deal. I have had sent me the works of Baudelaire, which have made me furious. Baudelaire was crazy! He died in a hospital, after having written some verses which attracted the good opinion of Victor Hugo, and which possessed no other merit than that of being immoral. Now they are making him out to be a man of genius, who was misunderstood!

I saw yesterday an exquisite drawing of a marvellous fresco discovered in Pompeii. It appears to be a procession in honour of Cybele, to whom Hercules is making a visit. Standing before Cybele is a gentleman divested of modesty; some others are bearing a serpent with much pomp--a serpent coiled around a tree. I understand nothing of the subject. You saw in Pompeii the little temple of Isis; it was near this that the fresco in question was found.

Good-bye, dear friend. Write to me, in order that I may see you in passing. From now on for several days, you may address me at the Palace of Saint Cloud.

CCCXXI

PARIS, _Wednesday night_, _August 5, 1869_.

... I spent a month at Saint Cloud, in a passable condition of health. I was never perfectly well mornings and nights, but the days were not bad. The open-air life did me good, I think, and gave me a little strength. On my return, Sunday, I had a most distressing attack of exhaustion, which continued two days. Then my physician at Cannes arrived, with a new remedy of his own invention, which cured me. They are eucalyptus tablets, and the eucalyptus is a tree native to Australia, which has been naturalized in Cannes. I am doing well, provided it lasts, as the man said while he was falling from a fourth-story window.

At Saint Cloud I read _The Bear_ before a very select audience, among whom were several young ladies who understood nothing, it seemed to me; and, since it caused no offence, I have a desire to present the story to the _Revue_. Tell me your way of thinking thereon, and try to point out very clearly the pros and cons. You must not overlook the progress in hypocrisy which the age has made in late years. What will your friends say about it? Besides, one may as well write his stories for himself, for those that are written by others are not exactly interesting.... Are you not grieved for your holy mother, the Church, by the accident at Cracow? If one were to observe attentively, I am sure one would find that such things are occurring elsewhere. You must read the account of the affair in the _Times_....

I dined, a few days ago, with the guileless Isabelle. I found her better than I had expected. The husband, who is quite small, is a very polite gentleman, who made me many compliments, nor were they badly turned either. The prince of the Asturias is most affable, and has an intelligent expression.... He resembles ----, and also the children of Velasquez’ time.

I am dreadfully bored. It is excessively hot at the Luxembourg, and all this matter of the Senate Council is anything but agreeable. They are going to open the establishment to the public, of which I disapprove strongly.[43]

Good-bye, dear friend. Write me something cheerful, for I am full of sadness. I have great need of your mirthsomeness and of your real presence.

CCCXXII

PARIS, _September 7, 1869_.

DEAR FRIEND: Do you expect to remain much longer at ----? Shall you not return here soon? While I have not as yet felt any sign of the approach of winter, I am beginning to look towards the South, for I have promised myself not to allow myself to be surprised by the cold. For several days I have been a little better, or, to speak more exactly, less ill. I have taken compressed-air baths, which have done me a little good, and I follow a new treatment which is tolerably successful. I am still solitary. I never go out at night, and see almost no one. By the help of all these precautions I am alive, or nearly so. Bülow succeeded in enticing me off.

At Saint Cloud the empress had me read _The Bear_ (it is called _Lokis_ now, which is bear in _Jmoude_) before some young girls, who, as I think I told you, understood nothing at all. This encourages me, and on the 15th of this month the thing will appear in the _Revue_. I have made several changes besides the names, and I wished to make still others, but my courage failed me. You will tell me what you think of it.

Yesterday we concluded our little matter.[44] I am uncertain as to the result. The respectable public is so hopelessly stupid, that what it formerly desired, now inspires it with fear. I have a suspicion that the bourgeois, who voted for M. Ferry a few months ago, now think that before some days in June, more or less remote, he will find himself disarmed. His distinguishing characteristic is never to be satisfied, with his own achievements especially.

The emperor’s illness is not serious, but it may be tedious, and there may be a return of it. It is said, and I am inclined to believe it, that the great journey to the Orient will be countermanded; possibly the strained relations existing between the sultan and the viceroy are considered of sufficient importance to wreck the plans for the proposed excursion.

Have you read, in the _Journal des Savants_, the history of the princess Tarakanof? This is not new, however, and I believe I have shown you the proofs.

I have in mind to write, this winter, a _Life of Cervantes_, to serve as a preface to a new edition of _Don Quixote_. Has it been a long time since you have read _Don Quixote_? Does it still amuse you? Have you ever tried to explain why? I find it amusing, and yet I can give no valid reason; on the contrary, I can think of many things about the book which should prove that it is worthless; nevertheless, it is excellent. I should like to know your ideas on the subject. Do me the kindness to read over several chapters, and ask yourself these questions. I depend on you to do me this favour.

Good-bye. I hope the month will not pass without seeing you.

CCCXXIII

CANNES, _November 11, 1869_.

DEAR FRIEND: I am here in the most glorious weather imaginable, and the most persistently such; to the despair of the gardeners, who can not make their cabbages grow. I regret to see that I am hardly better than if the weather were bad. Mornings and evenings I have always very painful attacks of exhaustion. I can not walk without becoming tired and losing my breath; in fact, I am still good for nothing and miserable.

Besides, I have had some serious worries. P., whom I brought with me, became suddenly so sullen and impertinent, that I was compelled to discharge her. You may imagine that to lose a servant who has been with you for forty years is not an agreeable thing. Fortunately, she soon repented, and begged my pardon with such persistence that I had a sufficiently good excuse to yield, and keep her. It is so difficult nowadays to find a reliable servant, and P. has many excellent qualities, which it would have been impossible for me to replace. I hope the anger and firmness which I showed, and of which, between ourselves, I scarcely thought myself capable, will have a salutary effect in the future, and prevent any return of such episodes.

I dined yesterday in Nice with M. Thiers, who is much changed physically since the death of Madame Dosne, but not at all mentally, it seemed to me. His mother-in-law was the soul of his home. She it was who made a salon for him, attracted to it desirable people, and understood how to be agreeable both to political and other guests. In short, she reigned in a court composed of heterogeneous elements, and had the skill to turn them all to the profit of M. Thiers. A life of solitude has now begun for him; his wife will take part in nothing.

Politically, I found Thiers even more changed. Seeing the unbounded folly that has taken possession of this land, he has once more become reasonable, and is preparing to combat it, as he did in 1849. I fear that he overestimates his strength. It is much easier to burst the goat-skin bottles of Æolus than to mend them again and make them air-tight. It seems to me probable that we shall have a struggle; the chassepot rifle is invincible, and will give the populace of Paris a historic lesson, as general Changarnier said. Still, is there any assurance that it will serve its purpose? and, if it should serve its purpose, what will happen? The officials of the government have become impossible; and the parliamentary government, insincere, dishonest, and devoid of capable men, seems to me no less impossible. In fact, to me the future, and I might say the present, is as gloomy as it is possible to be.

Good-bye, dear friend. Take good care of yourself, and write to me.

CCCXXIV

CANNES, _January 6, 1870_.

DEAR FRIEND: I thank you for your letter, and for your good wishes. I did not reply at once, because I did not have the physical strength. The cold weather, which has come upon us suddenly, is very severe, and has done me a great deal of harm. I feel a little better to-day, and take advantage of it to write to you. I am deeply discouraged; nothing does me any good. I try all the remedies, and find myself again back at the point from which I started; after a few days of relief, the disease manifests itself again as forcibly as ever. I sleep wretchedly, and with the greatest difficulty.

Not only do I not eat, but all kinds of nourishment inspire in me a feeling of disgust. Nearly all day I suffer frightfully, sometimes accompanied with spasms of pain. I read with great difficulty, and frequently do not understand the words under my eyes. I have an idea of something which I should like to put into a work, but how is it possible to write in the midst of these troubles! So you see, dear friend, the situation in which I find myself. I have the certainty that a slow and painful death is to be my fate. I must become reconciled to it.

The political situation, of which I understand nothing at all, is not calculated to offer me an agreeable distraction. It seems to me that we are marching on to a revolution, which will be more disastrous than the one through which we passed so blithesomely twenty years ago. I should like the performance to be delayed a little while, so that I may not attend it.

It froze here at six degrees, a phenomenon which has not occurred since 1821, so say the oldest inhabitants; all the gardens have been ruined. The cold snap came just when one might have supposed it to be midsummer; the season was advanced, and everything in bloom. It was lamentable to see great, beautiful plants, full of blossoms, from seven to eight feet tall in the evening, in one night reduced to the consistency of spinach.

Good-bye, dear friend. Keep well, and let me sometimes hear from you. I wish you a happy New Year....

CCCXXV

CANNES, _February 10, 1870_.

DEAR FRIEND: If I have not written to you for a long time, it is because I have had nothing but sad things to tell you of myself. I am more and more ailing, and the life I lead is truly miserable. I sleep hardly at all, and suffer nearly all the time I am awake. Besides, the winter has been a frightful one. All the lovely flowers which made the glory of the country have been destroyed, many of the orange-trees have been frozen, and not enough flowers are left to make you any pomade. Imagine the effect produced on a being nervous as I, by rain, hail, and cold. One suffers here ten times more from all these than he would in Paris.

So, then, you have had an insurrection, which was as silly as the hero[45] who was its instigator. We present a melancholy spectacle of ourselves, by the fashion in which we make use of our liberty and of parliamentary government. It is impossible not to be struck by the really laughable audacity with which propositions of the most monstrous kind are presented and maintained in the Chambers, which no one would dare to utter in a salon. This representative government is a comedy which one can hardly call amusing. Everybody in it lies with effrontery, and nevertheless, every one lets himself be taken in by the most skilful liar. There are persons who consider Crémieux eloquent, and think that Rochefort is a worthy citizen. We were certainly stupid enough in 1848, but we are even more so to-day.

I am making the experiment of using a paper of English manufacture, and do not know whether you will be able to read what I write. I have just translated for the _Revue_ a novel by Tourguenieff, which will appear next month. I am writing for myself, and perhaps for you, a little story in which the situation is largely one of love.

Good-bye. I wish you health and prosperity.

CCCXXVI

CANNES, _April 7, 1870_.

I have not written before, because I had only bad news to give you. I have been constantly, if not ill, at any rate in pain. I am still so. I am distressingly weak, and I am unable to walk a hundred steps from my home without sitting down several times to rest. Frequently, especially in the night, I have attacks of excruciating pain, which last a long time. “Nerves!” they tell me. Now, medicine, as you know, is almost ineffectual when it is a question of nerves.

Last Monday, wishing to make an experiment and find out if I could stand the journey to Paris, I went to Nice, and made a few calls. I thought at one time that I should be guilty of the indiscretion of dying in the home of a person whom I did not know intimately enough to take that liberty with. I returned here in a bad condition, and spent twenty-four hours in a state of suffocation.

Yesterday I was a little better. I went out and walked along the sea-shore, followed by a folding-chair on which I sat down every ten steps. Such is my life. I hope by the end of the month to be able to start for Paris. Will it be possible? I often wonder if I shall be strong enough to climb my stairway. You, who know so many things, do you know of some apartment in which I might put away my books and myself, without climbing many steps? I should not care to be too far away from the Institute.

I received a letter, very well turned, from M. Émile Ollivier, soliciting my vote.[46] I replied to him that I was no longer of this world. I think he will be elected without opposition.

How right you are in your judgment that we have gone mad! The clumsy assertion that to consult the people concerning the constitution is to create a despotism, is proof sufficient of what false metal it is cast! But the saddest of all is that no one is revolted by such absurdity. In reality, we are living in a period when there is no longer such a thing as ridicule or absurdity. Anything is said and anything is printed without shame.

I do not know when the review of Cervantes will appear; it will precede a splendid and beautiful edition of _Don Quixote_, which I will make you read one of these days. As for the story which I mentioned to you I shall reserve it to come out with my posthumous works. Still, if you wish to read it in manuscript, you may have this pleasure, which will take a quarter of an hour.

Good-bye, dear friend. Take good care of yourself. Health is the best of possessions. I shall not stir from here before the end of April. I expect to find you in Paris. Again good-bye.

CCCXXVII

CANNES, _May 15, 1870_.

DEAR FRIEND: I have been very ill, and am still. I have been allowed only the last few days to venture out of doors. I am horribly weak, yet am encouraged to hope that by the end of next week I may start on my journey. I shall return, probably, by easy stages, for I could not endure twenty-four hours of steady railroad travel.

My health is irrevocably ruined. I can not yet accustom myself to this life of privation and suffering, but whether I am resigned or not, I am condemned to it. I wish I might at least find distraction in occupation; but, in order to work, I need to have an amount of strength which is lacking. I envy greatly some of my friends who have been enabled to depart this life suddenly, with no suffering, and with none of the vexatious warnings that come to me day by day.

The political turmoil of which you speak has penetrated also to this little corner of the earth. I have seen here plainly instances of the ignorance and stupidity of men. I am convinced that very few voters have any conception of what they are doing. The Reds, who are in the majority here, have persuaded the imbeciles, who are even more numerous, that the matter at stake is the establishment of new taxes. Anyway, the result was fortunate.[47] “It is well cut out; now it is a question of sewing,” as Catherine de Medici said to Henry III. Unfortunately, I can see in this land of ours, just now, scarcely any one who is skilful in the use of the needle.

What do you think of my friend M. Thiers, who, after the experience of the banquets of 1848, has resumed the same tactics? It is said that magpies are never caught, twice running, with the same snare; but men, and men of intelligence, are more easily snared.

I am thinking of giving up my lodging, and I should like to find one nearer the ground, and in your quarter. Can you give me any information and any suggestions on this subject?...

Nothing could be more beautiful than the country about here at this season. Flowers abound everywhere in such profusion, and of such beauty, that verdure in the landscape is exceptional. Good-bye.

CCCXXVIII

PARIS, _June 26, 1870_.

DEAR FRIEND: I have been ill for a month. It is impossible for me to do anything, even read. I am a great sufferer, and have little hope. This may endure, perhaps, a long time.

I have put one of the shelves of my library in order, and am keeping for you the _Lettres de Madame de Sévigné_, in twelve volumes, and a small Shakespeare. When you return to Paris I will send them to you. I thank you for thinking of me.

CCCXXIX

PARIS, _July 18, 1870_.

DEAR FRIEND: I have been, and am still, very ill. For six weeks I have been unable to leave my room, and almost my bed. This is the third or fourth attack of bronchitis I have had since the beginning of the year. This promises nothing good for the approaching winter. When the heat of summer offers me no protection against colds, how will it be when winter comes?

I think that one must needs be admirably well, and have nerves of singular vigour, not to be too deeply affected by the events of to-day. I need not tell you how I feel. I am among those who believe that the thing could not be avoided.[48] The explosion might have been retarded, perhaps, but it was impossible to avert it altogether. Here, war is more popular than it has ever been, even among the bourgeois. There is a great deal of mouthing, which is assuredly unfortunate; but men are volunteering, and money is being subscribed, which is the essential point. Military men are full of confidence, but when one considers that the whole future hangs on the chance of a bullet or a ball, it is difficult to share that confidence.

Good-bye for the present, dear friend. I am already fatigued from writing you these two little pages. I am ailing to the last degree; still my physicians say that I am better, but I can not perceive it. I have not sent the books to your house, fearing there might be no one there to receive them.

Good-bye once more. I kiss you from my heart.

CCCXXX

PARIS, _Tuesday, August 9, 1870_.

DEAR FRIEND: I think it would be well for you not to come to Paris just now. I fear that in a little while there will be some lamentable scenes here. The streets are full of downcast, discouraged people, and drunken men singing the “Marseillaise.” Great disorder prevails. The army has been, and is, admirable, but is seems that we have no generals. All may still be repaired; but, for that, a miracle would be necessary.

I am no worse, only overwhelmed by the situation. I am writing to you from the Luxembourg, where we do nothing but exchange hopes and fears. Give me some news of yourself. Good-bye.

CCCXXXI

PARIS, _August 29, 1870_.

DEAR FRIEND: I thank you for your letter. I am still very ill and nervous. One would be so with less cause. The situation looks black to me. For a few days, however, it has mended slightly. The military men manifest confidence. The soldiers and the militia are fighting perfectly together; it appears that the army of Maréchal Bazaine has accomplished prodigies of valour, although it has always fought one against three. Now, to-morrow, perhaps to-day, another great battle is looked for. These last engagements have been frightful. The Prussians conduct war by hand-to-hand fighting. Until the present, this method has been successful for them, but it seems that near Metz the carnage was such as to give them cause for reflection. It is said that the young ladies of Berlin have lost all their partners in the dance. If we could escort the rest back to the frontier,--or bury them here, which would be better--we should not have reached the limit of our troubles. This terrible butchery, we must not deceive ourselves, is but the prologue to a tragedy of which the devil alone knows the catastrophe. A nation is not shaken like ours has been without suffering for it. It is inconceivable that from our victory, as from our defeat, a revolution will not come. All the blood which has been shed, or which will be shed, is to the profit of the Republic--that is, of organised disorder.

Good-bye, dear friend. Remain at P.; there you are safe. We are still very calm here, awaiting with great composure the arrival of the Prussians; but the devil will not be the loser thereby. Again good-bye....

CCCXXXII

CANNES, _September 23, 1870_.[49]

DEAR FRIEND: I am very ill--so ill, that it is a difficult matter to write. There is a slight improvement. I will write to you soon, I hope, more in detail. Send to my house in Paris, for the _Lettres de Madame de Sévigné_, and a Shakespeare. I should have had them taken to you, but I went away. Good-bye. I embrace you.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] One would suppose that in Saint Clair, a character in _The Etruscan Vase_, he has drawn himself: “He was naturally tender-hearted and affectionate, but at an age when lasting impressions are too easily formed, his over-transparent sensitiveness subjected him to the derision of his companions.... From that time he made it his business to conceal all appearances of what he regarded as a contemptible weakness.... In society he gained the unfortunate reputation of being unfeeling and indifferent.... He had travelled widely, and read much, yet he spoke of his travels and reading only when it was absolutely necessary.” Darcy, in _The Double Mistake_, is another character resembling his own.

[2] The following is one of his generous and delicate actions; Béranger, in a similar experience, did the same: “When I went to Spain, I was on the point of falling in love. It was one of the beautiful acts of my life. The woman who was the cause of my voyage never suspected it. Had I remained, I might have committed, possibly, a great blunder--that of offering a woman worthy of enjoying every happiness that one may have on earth, in exchange for the loss of all that was dear to her, an affection which I realized was far inferior to the sacrifice that she would probably have made.”

[3] The Résident in _The Spaniards in Denmark_, the Count and other gentlemen in _The Conspirators_, Kermouton and the Butter Merchant in _The Two Heirs_. But on the other hand, what true analyses are the characters of Clémence, of Sévin, and of Miss Jackson!

[4] _Letters to an Unknown_, Vol. II, p. 294.

[5] _Letters to an Unknown_, I, p. 7. “Abandon your optimistic ideas and realise that we are in this world to struggle and contend with our fellows.... Learn, also, that nothing is more common than to do wrong merely for the pleasure of doing it.”

[6]

No man knows the gods so well, That he may be sure of living until to-morrow.

[7] Mr. Sutton Sharpe, a highly distinguished English advocate.

[8] Upon the occasion of his nomination to membership in the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres.

[9] His election to the French Academy occurred the 14th, two days after this letter was written.

[10] His election to membership in the French Academy.

[11] The occasion of his reception at the French Academy.

[12] This letter was written originally in English. It is given unchanged.--TRANSLATOR.

[13] The trial of the suit relating to Libri.

[14] M. Nogent Saint-Laurens.

[15] _Loa_, a sort of conversational dithyramb, in honour of the person for whom the celebration is given.

[16] Implicated in the Orsini affair. The French Government requested his extradition, which England refused to grant.

[17] Marshal Pélissier, the duc de Malakoff.

[18] The Princess Clotilde had just married Prince Napoleon.

[19] The war in Italy.

[20] The address of the emperor, on his return from Italy.

[21] The last _Letters of Madame du Deffand_, which had just been published.

[22] The visit of the emperor and empress.

[23] On the occasion of the burial of Prince Jerome.

[24] To Scotland.

[25] The emperor of Austria.

[26] They were bored with the melodies. It is impossible to translate the pun into English.--TRANSLATOR.

[27] The Senate.

[28] The Libri matter, and the sessions of the Senate.

[29] _Le sel pour le pain_: Salt for the bread.

[30] _Bogdan Chmielnicki_, published in the volume entitled _The Cossacks of the Past_.

[31] _Troplong_--Too long.--TRANSLATOR.

[32] _Bousingots._ Slang expression: wineshop, “lush-crib.” Also, a Republican or Literary Bohemian of the first years of Louis Philippe’s reign.--TRANSLATOR.

[33] Report on musical copyright, which he was appointed to present to the Senate.

[34] _Le Lion Amoureux._

[35] On his nomination as Grand Officer in the Legion of Honour.

[36] _Une Passion dans le Grand Monde._

[37] On popular libraries, at the session of the Senate, June 25, 1867.

[38] Distribution of prizes to the exhibitors.

[39] The death of Maximilian.

[40] For Biarritz.

[41] This is the novel which was afterwards published under the title of Lokis.

[42] Lokis.

[43] The sessions of the Senate were going to be public.

[44] Adoption of the plan of the Senate Council, session of September 6, 1869.

[45] Victor Noir.

[46] For the French Academy.

[47] The vote of the plebiscite.

[48] The war with Prussia.

[49] Last letter, written two hours before his death.

* * * * *

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

vol. I

kiss your hands must humbly=> kiss your hands most humbly {pg 55}

a heard of American bison=> a herd of American bison {pg 313}

vol. II

beautiful Greeek literature=> beautiful Greek literature {pg 117}

I can not concieve=> I can not conceive {pg 124}

Bagnéres-de-Bigorre=> Bagnères-de-Bigorre {pg 172}

his views of Napoleon and and his comparison=> his views of Napoleon and his comparison {pg 177}

I have even seen=> I have ever seen {pg 169}

Saturady=> Saturday {pg 170}

Antionette=> Antoinette {pg 272}

I am begining=> I am beginning {pg 305}

End of Project Gutenberg's Letters to an Unknown, by Prosper Mérimée