“Yet to meet you would have upset me more than to see anyone else. Few of my friends loved Louis as you did. I cannot forget it, so you must forgive me.”
To Wladimir Stassoff.
“Paris, 21st August 1868.
“Dear Stassoff,—You see I leave out the Monsieur.
“I have just come from Grenoble, where they had almost forced me to go and preside at a sort of musical festival and to be present at the unveiling of a statue of Napoleon I.
“They ate and drank and did a hundred and fifty other things and I felt so ill....
“They fetched me in a carriage and toasted me, but I could not reply. The Mayor of Grenoble was full of compliments, he presented me with a gilt crown, but I had to sit a whole hour at that banquet.
“Next day I left and arrived home at eleven at night, more dead than alive.
“I feel good for nothing and I get such letters—asking me to do impossibilities. They want me to say nice things of a German artist, which is right enough since I agree thoroughly, but at the expense of a Russian artist of whom I think well also and whom they want to oust in favour of the German.
“I cannot lend myself to it. What a devil of a world this is!