The woman, on the contrary, was perfectly calm and self-possessed, and the lawyers’ speeches and other proceedings excellent. The battle, it seems to me, is only postponed, and at the slightest provocation is inevitable.
What is said of the emperor’s letter? I approve of it thoroughly. He has a way of his own of saying things, and when he speaks as a sovereign, he has the art of showing that he is not made of the same common dough as others. I think this is exactly what is needed by this noble nation, which does not like the commonplace.
Yesterday the princess of ——, who was drinking tea, ordered the footman to bring her ti sel bour le bain.[29] After half an hour the footman returned, with twelve kilogrammes of coarse salt, supposing that she wished to take a salt bath.
Some one presented to the empress a picture by Müller representing queen Marie Antoinette in prison. The Prince Imperial inquired who this lady was, and why she was not in a palace. It was explained to him that she was a queen of France, and what a prison was. Then he ran to the emperor and asked him please to pardon the queen whom he was keeping in prison.
He is a strange, sometimes a terrible, child. He says that he bows to the people always, because they deposed Louis Philippe, whom he did not like. He is a charming child. Good-bye, dear friend.
CCXLVIII
Cannes, January 6, 1862.
(I no longer remember dates.)
Dear Friend: I shall not tell you of the sunshine of Cannes, for fear of causing you too great distress amidst the snows in which you must be at this moment. What is written to me from Paris makes me cold just to read. I suppose you must be still at R——, or on the journey therefrom; so that I shall take my chances in addressing this to your official residence, as the surest place for you to be found.
I have here, as companion and neighbour, M. Cousin, who came to be cured of laryngitis, and who talks like a one-eyed magpie, eats like an ogre, and is astonished not to recover under this beautiful sky, which he now sees for the first time. He is, moreover, very interesting, for he possesses the gift of being witty to everybody. When alone with his servant, I fancy that he talks to him as he would to the most coquettish Orleanist or Legitimist duchess. The native Cannais are fascinated by him, and you may imagine how they will stare when they are informed that this man, who talks well on any subject, has translated Plato, and is the lover of Madame de Longueville. The only inconvenience is that he does not know when to stop talking. For a philosopher of the Eclectic school, it is a pity not to have adopted the good features of the Peripatetics.
I am not doing much of anything here. I am studying botany in a book and with the plants which fall under my hand, but every instant I bewail my bad sight. It is a study which I should have begun twenty years ago, when I had my eyes. It is, however, very amusing, although supremely immoral, since for one lady there are always at least six or eight gentlemen, all eager to offer her what she accepts with much indifference from the right and the left. I regret exceedingly not to have brought my microscope; still, with my spectacles I have seen stamens making love to a pistil without showing any embarrassment at my presence.