You are a rascal! You compromise my name in public places! I shall attack you in a court of justice for a theft of titles.
I have two pretty neighbours who have read Daniel, twice running. And the coachmen of Rouen fall off their seats while reading Fanny (historic)!
À propos of morality, have you read that the inhabitants of Glasgow have petitioned Parliament to suppress the models of nude women in the schools of drawing?
Adieu, old boy; dig hard!
What news of your wife? Why is she at Versailles? It is an atrocious place, colder than Siberia.
TO EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT.
Croisset, May, 1860.
I must tell you of the pleasure I had in reading your two books. I found them charming, full of new details and having an excellent style, showing at the same time nervous power and lofty imagination. That is history, it seems to me, and original history.
One sees in them always the soul within the body; the abundance of details does not stifle the psychological side. The moral is revealed beneath the facts, without declamation or digression. It lives,—a rare merit.
The portrait of Louis XV., that of Bachelier, and above all, that of Richelieu, seem to me to be products of the most finished art.