PARIS, _June 24, 1866_.
What has become of you? The cholera, it seems, is very bad at Amiens. I
do not know what is in store for us at the Luxembourg, and it may be
that the Senate-Council, with which we are threatened, will oblige me to
return here until the middle of the month.
To console myself, I have bought the twenty-seven volumes of the
_Mémoires du XVIIIe Siècle_, which I shall have bound. Is there in
them anything which you would like? Your Klincksieck has nothing that
one asks for; I shall inquire of Vieweg, who may have, perhaps, what I
want. Unfortunately, the edition of the _Mémoires de F. Auguste_, which
was published in Leipzig, is in the hands of M. de Bismarck.
I was surprised to receive the book you returned to me. I was afraid
that you had added it to those which you have already taken from me.
When will you come and choose another? In spite of the heat, I am far
from well.
You asked me, the other day, where I formed my acquaintance with the
dialects of the Bohemians. I had so many things to say to you that I
forgot to answer. I obtained it from M. Borrow; his book is one of the
most curious that I have ever read. What he retails of the Bohemians is
perfectly true, and his personal observations agree entirely with mine,
except on one point. In his quality as a clergyman he might well have
been mistaken, where, in my quality as a Frenchman and a layman I could
make conclusive experiments. What is most singular is that this man, who
has a gift for languages to the degree that he speaks the Cali dialects,
has so little perspicacity that he is unable to see at the outset that
in this dialect have remained many words foreign to the Spanish. He
pretends that the roots only of Sanskrit words have been retained....
I like the odour of that perfume, but I like it less since I have known
that the friend who gave it to you sees you so often.