"Bordeaux, Jan. 28, 1865.—I cannot say what a comfort it is, amid much else that is sad and trying, to think of you safe at Palazzo Parisani, in the home of many years, with the devoted auntie and the two old domestic friends to share your interests and sorrows and joys—so much left of the good of life, so much to gild the memory of the past. I know how you would feel the return to Rome at first—the desolate room, the empty chair, the unused writing-table; and then how you would turn to 'gather up the fragments that remain,' and to see that even the darkest cloud has its silver lining.... No, you cannot wish your mother back. In thinking of her, you will remember that if she were with you now, it would not be in the enjoyment of Rome, of Victoire, and Parisani, but in cheerless London rooms, with their many trials of spirits and temper. Now all those are forgotten by her, for
'Who will count the billows past,
If the shore be won at last'?
"And for yourself, you are conscious that you are in the place where she would have you be, and that if she can still be with you invisibly, her life and your life may still be running on side by side, and yours now giving to her unclouded eyes the pleasure it never could have given when earthly mists obscured them.
"I often think of Christian Andersen's story of the mother who was breaking her heart with grief for the loss of her only child, when Death bade her look into his mirror, and on one side she saw the life of her child as it would have been had it remained on earth, in all the misery of sorrow and sickness and sin; and on the other, the glorified life to which it was taken; and then the mother humbly gave thanks to the All-Wise, who chose for her, and could only beg forgiveness because she had wished to choose for herself.
"Do you know, my Esmeralda, that great sorrow has been very near me too? My sweetest mother has been very, very ill, and even now she is so little really better, that I am full of anxiety about her. From the New Year she was so ill at Holmhurst from the cold and snow, that it was decided that we must take the first available moment for going abroad. But we were packed up and waiting for more than a fortnight before her health and the tempests allowed us to start.
"Her passage on the 21st was most unfortunate, for a thick fog came on, which long prevented the steamer from finding the narrow entrance of Calais harbour, and the boat remained for two hours swaying about outside and firing guns of distress every ten minutes. These were answered by steamers in port, and the great alarm-bell of Calais tolled incessantly. At last another steamer was sent out burning red lights, and guided the wanderer in. My poor mother was quite unable to stand from the cold and fatigue when she was landed, and the journey to Paris, across the plains deep in snow, was a most anxious one. During the three days we spent at Paris, she was so ill that I had almost given up all hope of moving her, when a warm change in the weather allowed of our reaching Tours, where we stayed two more days.
"Tours is a fine old town, and is the place where our grandfather died. I saw his house, quite a palace, now the museum. We slept again at Angoulême, a very striking place, the old town rising out of the new, a rocky citadel surrounded with the most beautiful public walks I ever saw out of Rome, and a curious cathedral. This Bordeaux is a second Paris, only with a river like an arm of the sea, and immense quays, full of bustle and hubbub, like the Carminella at Naples."
"Hotel Victoria, Pau, Feb. 2.—On Monday we made the easiest move possible from Bordeaux to Arcachon, a most quaint little watering-place. The hotel was a one-storied wooden house, with an immensely broad West-Indian-like balcony, in which three or four people could walk abreast, descending on one side to the strip of silver sand which alone separated it from the wave-less bay of the sea called the Bassin d'Arcachon;[253] the other opening into the forest—sixty or seventy miles of low sandhills covered with arbutus, holly, and pine. Near the village, quantities of lodging-houses, built like Swiss châlets, are rising up everywhere in the wood, without walls, hedges, or gardens, just like a fairy story, and in the forest itself it is always warm, no winds or frosts penetrating the vast living walls of green. If the mother had been better, I should have liked to linger at Arcachon a few days, but we could not venture to remain so far from a doctor. Here at Pau we live in a deluge: it pours like a ceaseless waterspout; yet, so dry is the soil, that the rain never seems to make any impression. Pau is dreadfully full and enormously expensive. I see no beauty in the place, the town is modern with a modernised castle, the surrounding country flat, with long white roads between stagnant ditches, the 'coteaux' low hills in the middle distance covered with brushwood, the distant view scarcely ever visible. We are surrounded by cousins. Mrs. Taylor[254] is most kind—really as good-natured as she is ugly, and, having lived here twenty years, she knows everything about the place. Dr. Taylor is a very skilful physician. Edwin and Bertha Dashwood are also here with their five children, and Amelia Story with her father and step-mother.[255]
"Alas! my sweetest mother is terribly weak, and has hitherto only seemed to lose strength from day to day. She cannot now even walk across the room, nor can she move from one chair to another without great help. We are a little cheered, however, to-day by Dr. Taylor."