I have had no conversation with Mr. Churchill; but, in spite of my requesting him not to be at the trouble of moving the piano into my present sitting-room, as I am here for so short a time, I find it installed here this morning. He certainly is the black swan of hotel-keepers; and how kind and indulgent people are to me everywhere!... My young devotee, Miss A——, acquiesced very cordially in all my physical prescriptions for mental health, and did not seem to take at all amiss my plunging her hysterical enthusiasm first into perspirations, and then into cold baths.
Her maid has been with me this morning, with lovely fresh flowers—a bunch of delicious Persian lilac, and two flower-pots full of various mosses, smelling so fragrantly of mere earthy freshness that no perfume ever surpassed it.
VICTOR HUGO. The only other greeting she sent me was some pretty lines of Victor Hugo's, with which I was unacquainted, and which I send you, not for their singular inappropriateness as applied to me, but for their graceful turn:
"Tu es comme l'oiseau posé pour un instant
Sur des rameaux trop frêles,
Que sent ployer la branche, et qui chante pourtant
Sachant qu'il a des ailes;"
which I translate impromptu thus:
Thou art like the bird that alights, and sings
Though the frail spray bends, for he knows he has wings.
God bless you, my dear. Love to dear Dorothy.
Ever as ever yours,
Fanny.
Worcester, Tuesday, 17th.