I shall be in Paris, I think, on Wednesday morning.
I fell, last Wednesday, into a pretty kettle of fish. I was invited to a dinner of the Literary Fund, presided over by Lord Palmerston, and just as I was starting, received notice that, inasmuch as my name had been placed opposite a toast on the literature of Continental Europe, I must be prepared to make a speech. I yielded, with the pleasure that you may imagine, and for a long quarter of an hour talked nonsense in bad English, to an assembly of three hundred men of letters, or so-called such, and more than a hundred women, admitted to the honor of observing us eat tough chicken and leathery tongue. I was never so surfeited with silliness, as M. de Pourceaugnac said.
I received a visit yesterday from a lady and her husband, who brought me some autograph letters from the emperor Napoleon to Josephine, which they wished to sell. They are very singular, for their entire subject is love. They are perfectly authentic, being written on stamped paper and bearing the post-marks. What I fail to understand is why Josephine did not burn them as soon as she had read them....
CLXXV
Paris, May 19, 1858.
We are compelled to lead a tiresome existence at the Luxembourg. I am worn out with it, and I am dismayed, also, at the weather; I am told that it is good for the pease. I congratulate you, therefore, but it seems to me that the rain should fall only on the farms. I have been accusing you strongly of having taken one of my books—they are my sole possession—for which I have searched as if it were a needle. I discovered it finally, this morning, in a corner where I had hid it myself for safe-keeping; but it caused me more irritation than the book was worth.
I have been ill ever since my return—that is to say, I can neither eat nor sleep. Before you leave for so long a time, I must positively make a second portrait of you. For that, it is a question only of a half hour of patience, if patience is needed when one realises that one is giving people pleasure. I am to be in the party to go to Fontainebleau, and shall not return before the 29th. I wish we might have a long talk before I go. It seems a century since that has happened with us.
CLXXVI
Fontainebleau Palace, May 20, 1858.
... I am dreadfully cross, and half-poisoned from having taken an over-dose of laudanum. I have, besides, composed some verses for his Netherland Majesty, played charades, and made a fool of myself. This is why I am absolutely stupefied.