Chapter 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.