uillery gardens, where I made a sketch that's not a
masterpiece, but p'raps Madam will like to see it: and the evening very
merrily with the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Journal des Debats_, and
Jules Janin at a jolly little restaurateur's at the Champs Elysees at
the sign of the Petit Moulin Rouge. We had a private room and drank
small wine very gaily, looking out into a garden full of green arbours,
in almost every one of which were gentlemen and ladies in couples come
to dine _au frais_, and afterwards to go and dance at the neighbouring
dancing garden of Mabille. Fiddlers and singers came and performed for
us: and who knows I should have gone to Mabille too, but there came down
a tremendous thunderstorm, with flashes of lightning to illuminate it,
which sent the little couples out of the arbours, and put out all the
lights of Mabille. The day before I passed with my aunt and cousins, who
are not so pretty as some members of the family, but are dear good
people, with a fine sense of fun, and we were very happy until the
arrival of two newly married snobs, whose happiness disgusted me and
drove me home early to find three acquaintances smoking in the moonlight
at the hotel door, who came up and passed the night in my rooms. No, I
forgot, I went to the play first; but only for an hour--I couldn't stand
more than an hour of the farce, which made me laugh while it lasted, but
left a profound black melancholy behind it. Janin said last night that
life was the greatest of pleasures to him; that every morning, when he
woke, he was thankful to be alive; that he was always entirely happy,
and had never known any such thing as blue devils, or repentance, or
satiety. I had great fun giving him authentic accounts of London. I told
him that to see the people boxing in the streets was a constant source
of amusement to us; that in November you saw every lamp-post on London
Bridge with a man hanging from it who had committed suicide--and he
believed everything. Did you ever read any of the works of Janin?--No?
well, he has been for twenty years famous in France, and he on his side
has never heard of the works of Titmarsh, nor has anybody else here, and
that's a comfort. I have got very nice rooms, but they cost ten francs a
day: and I began in a dignified manner with a _domestique de place_, but
sent him away after two days: for the idea that he was in the anteroom
ceaselessly with nothing to do made my life in my own room intolerable,
a