of infuriating you by the civil
proposal that was made to relieve you of it by sending you a more
satisfactory one, under the impression that you are not satisfied with
what you have.

My dear, the first two pages of your letter might have been written with
a turkey-cock's quill, they actually gobble in the pugnacity of their
style, and as it lies by me, the very paper goes fr-fr-fr. But you shall
keep that identical picture, my dearest, since you have grown to like
it; so shake your feathers smooth again, funny woman that you are! and
let your soul return into its rest.

Sully is now in England. I wish there were any chance of your seeing
him, but after remaining there long enough to paint the queen, he
intends visiting Paris for a short time and then returning home. He is a
great friend of mine, and one of the few people here that I find
pleasure in associating with. As his delicacy about being paid for the
picture arose from the idea that, not being satisfied with the likeness,
you probably did not care to keep it, I have no doubt that, the present
state of your regard for it being made clear to him, he will not object
any more to receiving the price of it.

I presume that the long chapter you have written me upon the
inevitability of people's folly and the expediency of believing, first,
that God makes us fools, and then that he punishes us for behaving like
fools, is a result of your impeded circulation, under the effect of the
east wind upon your cuticle. How I wish, without the bitter month's
sea-sickness, you could be here beside me now, this 24th of March,
between an open window and door, and with my fire dying out; to be sure,
as I have just been taking two monstrous unruly dogs to a pond at some
distance from the house, for a swim, and as S---- was with me and I had
to carry her (now a pretty heavy lump) through several mud passages, the
agreeable glow in which I feel myself may not be altogether due to the
warmth of the atmosphere, although it is really as hot as our last of
May. How I wish you could spend the summer with me! How you would
rejoice in the heat, to me so hateful and intolerable! To persons of
your temperament, I suppose hell, instead of the popular idea of fire
and brimstone, presents some such frigid horror as poor Claudio's:
"thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice."

I was walking once with Trelawney, who is as chilly as an Italian
greyhound, at Niagara, by a wall of rock, upon which the