While you are devoting yourself to the cultivation of enthusiasm, I
continue to cough, and am very ill with a frightful cold. I hope you
will be touched by this. I do not understand why you should remain three
days in Lucerne, unless you spend your time on the lake. But it is
useless to give you advice which will reach you too late. My only word
of admonition, and one, I trust, by which you will profit, is not to
forget your friends in France, in the beautiful country you are now
visiting.
There is positively not a soul in Paris, but I am not averse to the
solitude. I am spending my evenings comfortably enough, doing nothing.
If I were not feeling really miserable, I should find this quiet
extremely pleasant, and I should like it to continue the whole year.
The surprises which you encounter in your travels must be amusing, and
it is a source of regret to me that I am unable to witness them. If you
had exercised a little strategy in arranging your plans, we might have
met somewhere in the course of your journey and made an excursion or two
together, and caught a glimpse of some chamois or, at any rate, some
black squirrels.
Were I not so ill that it is impossible to form two consecutive ideas, I
should take advantage of your absence in order to work. I have a promise
to fulfil with the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, and a _Life of Brantôme_ to
write, in which I have quantities of rash things to say. It amuses me to
arrange and rearrange the sentences in my mind, but when it comes to the
point of leaving my easy-chair and of going to my desk to put them on
paper, my courage fails me. I am sorry you did not take with you a
volume of Beyle on Italy, for it would have entertained you on the way,
and it would have given you, besides, some knowledge of social
conditions there. Beyle was especially fond of Milan, because it was
there he fell in love. I have never been there, but I have never cared
for the Milanese whom I have met, for they have always reminded me of
French provincials.
In Venice, if you should come across any old Latin book from the
printing-house of Aldus, with a wide margin, if it does not cost too
much, buy it for me. You will recognise it by the letters in italics,
and by the trade-mark, which is a unicorn wrestling with a dolphin.
Travelling with such a large party as you are, I fancy you will write to
me very seldom. You might, however, grant me the delight of an
occasional letter, and give me renewed patience, for, as you are aware,
I do not possess your virtue.
Good-bye. Enjoy yourself, and see as many beautiful things as you can,
but do not conceive the idea of seeing everything. You must say to
yourself, “I shall return.” Your memory will always be stored with
reminiscences enough to keep you from being dull. I should like to ride
in a gondola with you. Once more good-bye. Above all things, take care
of yourself, and do not overtire.