I arrived here ill enough in health, after a week at Compiègne spent in tight-fitting trousers, with all the patience possible. They tried to hold me with M. de Massa’s piece, but I resisted strenuously and fled to this place, where the sun has produced its usual effect. Of three days, I have had two good ones; the third even has not been very bad; a slight attack of suffocation not to be compared to the sensation of strangling which a Paris winter brings on.
Why is it that, fond of travelling as you are, and having, moreover, souls in your charge, you do not spend your winters in Pisa or in any place where the great arbiter of the health of humanity, my lord, the Sun, is to be seen? I believe that but for him I should have lain for a long time under several feet of earth.
All my friends are hastening to precede me there. Last year was rough on my little circle of comrades. Several years ago we used to dine together once a month; I think I am now the sole survivor. This is the solemn reproach which I address to the Great Engineer: Why do not men fall like leaves, all in one season? Your Father Hyacinthe will not fail to say absurd things to me on this subject: “O man, what are ten years? What is a century?” and so on. The question for me is, What is eternity? To me the all-important thing is the small number of days. Why must mine be so bitter?
At Cannes this year are only a quarter of the foreigners who come usually. There was a story of a Parisian who ate three lobsters, and died of cholera. The country was at once placed under suspicion, and the mayors of Nice and of Cannes conceived the mistaken idea of denying in the newspapers the appearance of cholera, consequently everybody believed that it had come. A few of my friends have been as heroic as I, and we form a little colony which is quite able to dispense with the crowd.
I fear I shall be obliged to return to Paris a little after the opening of the Senate, to thunder forth all my eloquence on the bird-organ law, of which I am the advocate. I have written to M. Rouher to offer him peace, and to give him the opportunity to escape my eloquence. Will he accept it? If he is reckless enough to desire war, will you wait until the end of January to see me, and will you grant me a kind reception on New Year’s day? In the event that the affair turns towards peace, I shall ask you this in February. Good-bye, dear friend. In the meantime, I send you my best and tenderest wishes.
CCLXXXVII
Cannes, February 20, 1866.
Dear Friend: You charge me with indolence, you, who are its personification! You, who live in Paris and discuss affairs with civilised folk, should keep me informed of what is done and said in the great city. You never tell me enough.
Is it true that crinoline is no longer in fashion, and that between the gown and the skin nothing is worn but the chemise? If this is so, shall I recognise you when I arrive in Paris? I recollect an old man who said to me when I was young, that on entering a drawing-room where there were some women without hoop-skirts and without powder, he supposed they were chamber-maids assembled in the absence of their mistresses. I am not sure that one can be a woman without crinoline.
I have allowed the address to go to vote without my presence, and it was not lost; but I shall be compelled to return soon on account of my bird-organs.[33] The question is not yet concluded, and it will be necessary a second time to display my eloquence, which exasperates me excessively.