* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

[Paris], 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysees:
June 16, [1852].

My first word must be to thank you, my dearest kind friend, for your
affectionate words to me and mine, which always, from you, sink deeply.
It was, on my part, great gratification to see you and talk to you and
hear you talk, and, above all, perhaps, to feel that you loved me still
a little. May God bless you both! And may we meet again and again in
Paris and elsewhere; in London this summer to begin with! As the
Italians would say in relation to any like pleasure: 'Sarebbe una
_benedizione_.'

We are waiting for the English weather to be reported endurable in order
to set out. Mrs. Streatfield, who has been in England these twelve days,
writes to certify that it is past the force of a Parisian imagination to
imagine the state of the skies and the atmosphere; yet, even in Paris,
we have been moaning the last four days, because really, since then, we
have gone back to April, and a rather cool April, with alternate showers
and sunshine--a crisis, however, which does not call for fires, nor
inflict much harm on me. It was the thunder, we think, that upset the
summer.

You seem to have had a sort of inkling about my brittleness when you
were here. It was the beginning of a bad attack of cough and pain in the
side, the consequence of which was that I turned suddenly into the
likeness of a ghost and frightened Robert from his design of going to
England. About that I am by no means regretful; he was not wanted, as
the event proved abundantly. The worst was that he was annoyed by the
number of judicious observers and miserable comforters who told him I
was horribly changed and ought to be taken back to Italy forthwith. I
knew it was nothing but an accidental attack, and that the results would
pass away, as they did. I kept quiet, applied mustard poultices, and am
now looking again (tell dear Mr. Martin) 'as if I had shammed.' So all
these misfortunes are strictly historical, you are to understand.
To-night we are going to Ary Scheffer's to hear music and to see ever so
many celebrities. Oh, and let me remember to tell you that M. Thierry,
the blind historian, has sent us a message by his physician to ask us to
go to see him, and as a matter of course we go. Madame Viardot, the
prima donna, and Leonard, the first violin player at the Conservatoire,
are to be at M. Scheffer's.

After all, you are too right.