Shorthouse's[[189]] letter could not go with Dante, and I will enclose it in my next. I have got Democracy. The Mays, considered an authority on the subject, do not think much of it. Forster does, and says it is not by Mrs. Adams. He says that Bright has no idea that he left either too early or too late. Will you—very earnestly—put my excuses before Mrs. Gladstone for my way of dealing with her boundless hospitality?
La Madeleine Cannes Feb. 2, 1883
I wonder whether you would come to lunch to-morrow, Saturday? Perhaps I could inscribe in your most private book the list of the hundred works that have most influenced human history.
*****
Feb. 13, 1883
... These books are enclosed to show Mr. Gladstone what good German prose is, in expounding difficult, very difficult, questions. Also, a little book, by a very famous Dane who has grown more and more to be a power since his death....
La Madeleine March 3, 1883
After seeking a moment's distraction at a chateau near Marseilles I came home to find your letter, so kindly written in the intervals of Parisian dissipations.
The failure of Challemel was truly sad, but I hope that Fedora,[[190]] following the little dinner on the Boulevard, made up for it. The tranquillity and sameness of Cannes will soon be thrust far out of sight by the centre of European life. We do our best, in your absence, to be a little worldly. Bright, Houghton, and the Mallets lunch to-day. I am to meet Colonel Hay at tea, and the little bishop[[191]] at dinner this evening.
... It is pleasant to think that Lyons made you enjoy Paris, and divined the one thing you all have a passion for, and he seems to have done the political part of his work very well by bringing you into contact both with the ruling men and with the Left Centre. That was just what was wanting to redress the Wolvertonian balance.