BIARRITZ, August 4th, 1862.
I am afraid I have caused some confusion in our correspondence, as I
induced you to write too soon to places where I have not yet arrived. It
will be better for you to address your letters to Paris, just as though
I were there; the embassy then sends them after me, and I can more
quickly send word there if I alter my route. Yesterday evening I
returned from St. Sebastian to Bayonne, where I slept, and am now
sitting here in a corner-room of the Hotel de l'Europe, with charming
view on the blue sea, which drives its white foam through the curious
cliffs against the lighthouse. I have a bad conscience for seeing so
many beautiful things without you. If one could transport you here
through the air, I would go directly back again to St. Sebastian, and
take you with me. Fancy the Siebengebirge with the Drachenfels placed by
the sea; close by, Ehrenbreitstein, and between the two, pushing its
way into the land, an arm of the sea, somewhat broader than the Rhine,
and forming a round bay behind the mountains. In this you bathe in
transparently clear water, so heavy and so salt that you swim on the top
of it by yourself, and look through the broad gate of rocks into the
sea, or landward where the mountain chains top each other, always
higher, always bluer.
The women of the middle and lower classes are strikingly pretty,
occasionally beautiful; the men surly and uncivil; and the comforts of
life to which we are accustomed are missing. The heat is not worse here
than there, and I do not mind it; find myself, on the contrary, very
well, thank God. The day before yesterday there was a storm, such as I
have never seen anything like. I had to take a run three times before I
could succeed in getting up a flight of three steps on the jetty; pieces
of stone and large fragments of trees were carried through the air.
Unfortunately, therefore, I countermanded my place in a sailing vessel
to Bayonne, for I could not suppose that after four hours all would be
quiet and cheerful. I lost thus a charming sail along the coast,
remained a day more at St. Sebastian, and left yesterday in the
diligence, rather uncomfortably packed between nice little Spanish
women, with whom I could not talk a syllable. So much Italian, however,
they understood that I could demonstrate to them my satisfaction with
their exterior. I looked to-day at a railway guide to see how I could
get from here--that is, from Toulouse--by railway over Marseilles to
Nice, then by boat to Genoa; from there over Venice, Trieste, Vienna,
Breslau, Posen, Stargard to Cöslin! If it were only possible to go over
Berlin! I cannot very well pass through there just now.