etting outside into
the street, playing Eolian harps among the area railings, and going down
the New Road like the blast of a trumpet.

I forgive you your reviling of me: there's a shovelful of live coals for
your head--does it burn? And am, with true affection--does it burn
now?--

Ever yours.

[Sidenote: The Hon. Richard Watson.]

PARIS, 48, RUE DE COURCELLES, ST. HONORE,
_Friday, Nov. 27th, 1846._

MY DEAR WATSON,

We were housed only yesterday. I lose no time in despatching this
memorandum of our whereabouts, in order that you may not fail to write
me a line before you come to Paris on your way towards England, letting
me know on what day we are to expect you to dinner.

We arrived here quite happily and well. I don't mean here, but at the
Hotel Brighton, in Paris, on Friday evening, between six and seven
o'clock. The agonies of house-hunting were frightfully severe. It was
one paroxysm for four mortal days. I am proud to express my belief, that
we are lodged at last in the most preposterous house in the world. The
like of it cannot, and so far as my knowledge goes does not, exist in
any other part of the globe. The bedrooms are like opera-boxes. The
dining-rooms, staircases, and passages, quite inexplicable. The
dining-room is a sort of cavern, painted (ceiling and all) to represent
a grove, with unaccountable bits of looking-glass sticking in among the
branches of the trees. There is a gleam of reason in the drawing-room.
But it is approached through a series of small chambers, like the joints
in a telescope, which are hung with inscrutable drapery. The maddest
man in Bedlam, having the materials given him, would be likely to devise
such a suite, supposing his case to be hopeless and quite incurable.

Pray tell Mrs. Watson, with my best regards, that the dance of the two
sisters in the little Christmas book is being done as an illustration by
Maclise; and that Stanfield is doing the battle-ground and the outside
of the Nutmeg Grater Inn. Maclise is also drawing some smaller subjects
for the little story, and they write me that they hope it will be very
pretty, and they think that I shall like it. I shall have been in London
before I see you, probably, and I hope the book itself will then be on
its road to Lausanne to speak for itself, and to speak a word for me
too. I have never left s