BIARRITZ, _Villa Eugénie_, _September 27, 1862_.
DEAR FRIEND: I am writing to you still at ----, although I know nothing
at all of your movements, but it seems to me that you were not to return
so soon to Paris. If, as I hope, you have such weather as ours, you
should take advantage of it, and not be in too great a hurry to return
to the odours of the asphalt streets of Paris.
I am here beside the sea, and breathing more freely than I have in a
long while. The waters of Bagnères were beginning to make me very ill. I
was told that this was all the better, as it proved them to be taking
effect. The fact is that as soon as I had left Bagnères I felt made
over. The sea air, and perhaps also the royal food which I eat here,
have finished my cure. It must be admitted that the cooking in the Hotel
de ---- at Bagnères is the most abominable I have ever seen, and I believe
verily that Panizzi and I were undergoing slow poisoning.
There are few people at the villa, and those only agreeable people whom
I have known for a long time. In the city there is no crowd, very few
French especially; the Spanish and the Americans predominate. On
Thursday, when we receive, it is necessary to put the Americans from the
North on one side and the Americans from the South on the other, for
fear that they will devour each other.
On this day we dress. The rest of the time we make no attempt at a
toilette; the ladies come to dinner in high-necked gowns, and we of the
ugly sex in frock-coats. There is not a château in France or England
where there is such freedom and absence of etiquette, nor a hostess so
gracious and so kind to her guests.
We take charming walks in the valleys that skirt the Pyrenees, and
return from them with prodigious appetites. The sea, which ordinarily is
extremely rough here, has been for a week surprisingly calm; but it is
nothing compared to the Mediterranean, and especially to the sea at
Cannes. The bathers appear in the strangest of costumes. There is a
Madame ----, who is the colour of a turnip, and she dresses in blue and
powders her hair. It is pretended that she puts ashes on her head
because of the misfortunes of her country.
In spite of the walks and the food, I manage to work a little. I have
written, while at Biarritz and in the Pyrenees, more than half a volume.
It is the history of a Cossack hero, which is destined for the _Journal
des Savants_. Speaking of literature, have you read Victor Hugo’s speech
at a dinner of Belgian booksellers and other swindlers in Brussels? What
a pity that this fellow, who has at his command such beautiful fancies,
has not the shadow of good judgment, nor the decency to restrain himself
from uttering platitudes unworthy of an honest man! In his comparison of
a tunnel with a railway, there is more poetry than I have seen in any
book I have read in five or six years; but, for all that, it is all
merely fancy. There is no depth, no solidity, no common-sense; he is a
man who becomes intoxicated with his own words, and who no longer takes
the trouble to think.
The twentieth volume of Thiers pleases me, as it does you. There was, to
my mind, a tremendous difficulty to be met in extracting anything
tangible from the immense medley of conversations of Sainte Helena
reported by Las Casas, and in this Thiers has succeeded marvellously. I
like, also, his views of Napoleon and his comparison of him with other
great men. He is a little severe on Alexander and on Caesar; yet there
is much truth in what he says of the absence of virtue on the part of
Caesar. Here, everybody is intensely interested in the book, and I fear
there is far too much affection for the hero; for instance, they are
unwilling to admit the truth of the anecdote of Nicomedes; nor you
either, I fancy.
Good-bye, dear friend. Take good care of yourself, and do not sacrifice
yourself too much for others, because it will become a habit with you,
and that which you do to-day with pleasure you may be obliged some day
to do with pain. Good-bye again.