PARIS, _June 29, 1869_.
Thanks for your letter, dear friend. I am furious with poets and their
pretended temperate climates. There is no spring, there is not even any
summer. To-day, I ventured out of doors, and came back shivering. When I
think that there are people who go to the woods, and even talk of love
in this bitter weather, I am tempted to exclaim at the miracle. I say to
myself that it is done every day. I am mistaken; it is impossible; it
has never been done, even in the past.
I have finished the history of Princess Tarakanof, who was a saucy
baggage, but she had a lover whose letters will amuse you. He suffered
the fate of many mortals. I hope the _Journal des Savants_ penetrates as
far as ----; if not, I will try to send it to you.
I am going, Thursday, to Saint Cloud, where I shall remain, probably,
about a fortnight. I am not sure how I shall endure the life there,
although I am, they tell me, almost the only guest invited. Besides, if
I become ill I can in an hour be reinstated at my own fireside. I have
told you something of the tribulations that I suffer here in my home,
so that I will confess to you, it is not without joy that I am going
away. Since your departure I have had two or three most tiresome scenes.
I am reading, with the greatest difficulty, Renan’s Saint Paul.
Decidedly, he is a monomaniac as to scenery. Instead of sticking to his
subject, he describes the woods and the meadows. If I were an abbé I
should delight in writing an article for him to review. Have you read
the harangue of our holy father, the Pope?...
I am confident that both in word and in deed we are about to be guilty
of enormities for which there will not be enough baked apples in the
world. Alas! this may end in harder projectiles! What a misfortune that
the modern mind is so dull! Do you think it has ever been so before?
There have been ages, doubtless, in which there were more ignorance,
more barbarism, more absurdity, but now and then some brilliant genius
appeared to make compensation; while to-day, it seems to me that all
intellectuality is on a plane which is miserably low.
As I scarcely ever go out, I read a great deal. I have had sent me the
works of Baudelaire, which have made me furious. Baudelaire was crazy!
He died in a hospital, after having written some verses which attracted
the good opinion of Victor Hugo, and which possessed no other merit than
that of being immoral. Now they are making him out to be a man of
genius, who was misunderstood!
I saw yesterday an exquisite drawing of a marvellous fresco discovered
in Pompeii. It appears to be a procession in honour of Cybele, to whom
Hercules is making a visit. Standing before Cybele is a gentleman
divested of modesty; some others are bearing a serpent with much pomp--a
serpent coiled around a tree. I understand nothing of the subject. You
saw in Pompeii the little temple of Isis; it was near this that the
fresco in question was found.
Good-bye, dear friend. Write to me, in order that I may see you in
passing. From now on for several days, you may address me at the Palace
of Saint Cloud.