Chapter CLXXXII: CANNES, October 8, 1858

Your gimcracks have arrived here without accident. I shall be in Paris next Wednesday or Thursday. When you want your trinkets, you can come and get them. I returned from Florence by land, and am glad to have decided on that route. After leaving Spezzia the scenery is magnificent, as fine, if not finer, than that found from Genoa to Nice. I am bringing with me a lovely souvenir of Florence. It is a beautiful city. Venice is only pretty. As for works of art, there is no comparison possible. In Florence there are two unexcelled museums.

When you visit Pisa, I would advise you to stop at the Hôtel de la Grand Bretagne. It is the perfection of comfort. I committed the egregious folly, on the recommendation of a Nice newspaper, of going to see a cave of stalactites, which was discovered by a rabbit. It is in the suburbs of a town named Colle, in France, but only a step from the frontier. I was obliged to crawl over the ground for an hour, in order to see a few crystallisations more or less ridiculous, in the form of carrots or turnips, hanging from the roof.

I found here a complete desert; all the hotels are empty, not an Englishman in the street. It is just the time, however, to spend a few days here. The weather is superb, just warm enough to be comfortable in the shade, but the sun is no longer dangerous. In two months everything will be crowded, and there will be a north-wind of the most disagreeable kind. Travellers are stupid sheep.

Did I tell you of the quail served with rice, which I ate at Milan? It was the most remarkable thing I discovered in that city, and is worth the journey. I return to this country with delight, after having visited so many others which are considered grander. The mountains of the Estérel impressed me as smaller than the Alps, but their outlines are as graceful as any that one can see. Enough said on the subject of my travels.

What are your intentions for this autumn? Do you intend to bury yourself in your Dauphiny mountains? Where you are concerned, one never knows what to expect. You look one way and row another. Good-bye....

CLXXXIII

PARIS, _October 21, 1858_.

Here I am back in this city of Paris, where I am furious not to find you. It begins to be cold and dismal, and still no one has returned. I left Cannes in admirable weather, which became greyer and greyer with every step I took towards the North.

Pity me! While in Venice I bought a chandelier, which arrived yesterday broken in three places. The Jew who sold it to me promised to make good any damage, but what power have I to compel him to do so?

I have not yet become accustomed to sleeping in my own bed. I feel like a stranger here, and do not know what to do with my time. It would be altogether different if you were in Paris.

I bought in Cannes that strange animal, the _prigadiou_, whose portrait I have made for you. It is still alive, but I fear that you will find it no longer in this world. It lives on flies, and flies are beginning to be scarce. I have still a dozen which I am fattening. My friends think I am thinner. It seems to me that my health is a trifle better than before I went away....