Chapter 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.