ll go to see it again, for it almost
broke my heart and split my head. I had a headache afterwards for
twenty-four hours. Even Robert, who gives himself out for _blase_ on
dramatic matters, couldn't keep the tears from rolling down his cheeks.
The exquisite acting, the too literal truth to nature everywhere, was
_exasperating_--there was something profane in such familiar handling of
life and death. Art has no business with real graveclothes when she
wants tragic drapery--has she? It was too much altogether like a bull
fight. There's a caricature at the shop windows of the effect produced,
the pit protecting itself with multitudinous umbrellas from the tears of
the boxes. This play is by Alexandre Dumas _fils_--and is worthy by its
talent of Alexandre Dumas _pere_.

Only that once have I been in a Parisian theatre. I couldn't go even to
see 'Les Vacances de Pandolphe' when George Sand had the goodness to
send us tickets for the first night. She failed in it, I am sorry to
say--it did not 'draw,' as the phrase is. Now she has left Paris, but is
likely to return.

I am sure it will do you great good to have change and liberty and
distraction in various ways. The '_anxiety_' you speak of--oh, I do hope
it does not relate to Gerardine. I always think of her when you seem
anxious.

I shall be very glad if, when you come, you should be inclined to give
your attention, you with your honest and vigorous mind, to the facts of
the political situation, not the facts as you hear them from the
English, or from our friend Madme Mohl, who confessed to me one day
that she liked exaggerations because she hated the President. She is a
clever shrewd woman, but most eminently and on all subjects a woman; her
passions having her thoughts inside them, instead of her thoughts her
passions. That's the common distinction between women and men, is it
not?

Robert, too, will tell you that he hates all Buonapartes, past, present,
or to come, but then _he_ says _that_ in his self-willed, pettish way,
as a manner of dismissing a subject he won't think about--and knowing
very well that he doesn't think about it, not mistaking a feeling for a
reason, not for a moment. There's the difference between women and men.

Well, but you won't come here to knit your brows about politics, but
rather to forget all sorts of anxieties and distresses, and be well and
happy, I do hope. You deserve a holiday after all that work. God bless
you, dear friend.

Ou