Charles Gounod.
My dear Architect,—I seize the opportunity our good musician's letter gives me, to let you know I am alive. Our great sculptor Gruyère has informed me you are struggling with an accumulation of head colds. I trust the sun that shines o'er noble and voluptuous Venice will thaw the ice winter has piled within your brain!
You had a great success at the Exhibition. Everybody was much struck by your drawings, the Ambassador and his wife most of all. I do not mention my own performances; they are neither important nor well executed enough to be worth writing about. Our celebrated composer's Mass has had a great success, both amongst ourselves and with the general public. It was well performed, thanks to the activity he displayed in shaking up all the old sleepy-heads! If you see Loubens,[10] pray give him my best regards. What have you done with Courtépée? Can you get him up in the mornings when you get up yourself, you early bird?
Farewell! If I can make myself either useful or agreeable to you, command me.—E. Hébert.
Murat absolutely refuses to write even two lines. He says he will write later on.
CHARLES GOUNOD.
III
GERMANY
My natural road from Rome to Germany lay by Florence into Northern Italy, and so eastwards viâ Ferrara, Padua, Venice, and Trieste.
Although I did make a halt in Florence, I cannot undertake to give a full description of that city. Like Rome, it possesses an inexhaustible store of art treasures. The Uffizi Gallery with its wonderful Tribune (a very shrine of exquisite relics), the Palazzo Pitti, the Academy, Churches and Convents, all teem with masterpieces. But even here, in lovely Florence, Michael Angelo reigns supreme, from the proud eminence of that wonderful and overwhelmingly impressive Medici Chapel, on which, as on the Vatican at Rome, his genius has stamped its mark—unique, incomparable, overshadowing every other.