g walk about the streets, and lost himself
fifty times. This was Sunday, and he hardly knew what to say of it, as
he saw it there and then. The bitter observance of that day he always
sharply resisted, believing a little rational enjoyment to be not
opposed to either rest or religion; but here was another matter. "The
dirty churches, and the clattering carts and waggons, and the open shops
(I don't think I passed fifty shut up, in all my strollings in and out),
and the work-a-day dresses and drudgeries, are not comfortable. Open
theatres and so forth I am well used to, of course, by this time; but so
much toil and sweat on what one would like to see, apart from religious
observances, a sensible holiday, is painful."

The date of his letter was the 22nd of November, and it had three
postscripts.[130] The first, "Monday afternoon," told me a house was
taken; that, unless the agreement should break off on any unforeseen
fight between Roche and the agent ("a French Mrs. Gamp"), I was to
address him at No. 48, Rue de Courcelles, Faubourg St. Honore; and that
he would merely then advert to the premises as in his belief the "most
ridiculous, extraordinary, unparalleled, and preposterous" in the whole
world; being something between a baby-house, a "shades," a haunted
castle, and a mad kind of clock. "They belong to a Marquis Castellan,
and you will be ready to die of laughing when you go over them." The
second P.S. declared that his lips should be sealed till I beheld for
myself. "By Heaven it is not to be imagined by the mind of man!" The
third P.S. closed the letter. "One room is a tent. Another room is a
grove. Another room is a scene at the Victoria. The upstairs rooms are
like fanlights over street-doors. The nurseries--but no, no, no, no
more! . . ."

His following letter nevertheless sent more, even in the form of an
additional protestation that never till I saw it should the place be
described. "I will merely observe that it is fifty yards long, and
eighteen feet high, and that the bedrooms are exactly like opera-boxes.
It has its little courtyard and garden, and porter's house, and cordon
to open the door, and so forth; and is a Paris mansion in little. There
is a gleam of reason in the drawing-room. Being a gentleman's house, and
not one furnished to let, it has some very curious things in it; some of
the oddest things you ever beheld in your life; and an infinity of easy
chairs and sofas. . . . Bad weather. It is sn