The emperor’s illness is not serious, but it may be tedious, and there may be a return of it. It is said, and I am inclined to believe it, that the great journey to the Orient will be countermanded; possibly the strained relations existing between the sultan and the viceroy are considered of sufficient importance to wreck the plans for the proposed excursion.
Have you read, in the Journal des Savants, the history of the princess Tarakanof? This is not new, however, and I believe I have shown you the proofs.
I have in mind to write, this winter, a Life of Cervantes, to serve as a preface to a new edition of Don Quixote. Has it been a long time since you have read Don Quixote? Does it still amuse you? Have you ever tried to explain why? I find it amusing, and yet I can give no valid reason; on the contrary, I can think of many things about the book which should prove that it is worthless; nevertheless, it is excellent. I should like to know your ideas on the subject. Do me the kindness to read over several chapters, and ask yourself these questions. I depend on you to do me this favour.
Good-bye. I hope the month will not pass without seeing you.
CCCXXIII
Cannes, November 11, 1869.
Dear Friend: I am here in the most glorious weather imaginable, and the most persistently such; to the despair of the gardeners, who can not make their cabbages grow. I regret to see that I am hardly better than if the weather were bad. Mornings and evenings I have always very painful attacks of exhaustion. I can not walk without becoming tired and losing my breath; in fact, I am still good for nothing and miserable.
Besides, I have had some serious worries. P., whom I brought with me, became suddenly so sullen and impertinent, that I was compelled to discharge her. You may imagine that to lose a servant who has been with you for forty years is not an agreeable thing. Fortunately, she soon repented, and begged my pardon with such persistence that I had a sufficiently good excuse to yield, and keep her. It is so difficult nowadays to find a reliable servant, and P. has many excellent qualities, which it would have been impossible for me to replace. I hope the anger and firmness which I showed, and of which, between ourselves, I scarcely thought myself capable, will have a salutary effect in the future, and prevent any return of such episodes.
I dined yesterday in Nice with M. Thiers, who is much changed physically since the death of Madame Dosne, but not at all mentally, it seemed to me. His mother-in-law was the soul of his home. She it was who made a salon for him, attracted to it desirable people, and understood how to be agreeable both to political and other guests. In short, she reigned in a court composed of heterogeneous elements, and had the skill to turn them all to the profit of M. Thiers. A life of solitude has now begun for him; his wife will take part in nothing.
Politically, I found Thiers even more changed. Seeing the unbounded folly that has taken possession of this land, he has once more become reasonable, and is preparing to combat it, as he did in 1849. I fear that he overestimates his strength. It is much easier to burst the goat-skin bottles of Æolus than to mend them again and make them air-tight. It seems to me probable that we shall have a struggle; the chassepot rifle is invincible, and will give the populace of Paris a historic lesson, as general Changarnier said. Still, is there any assurance that it will serve its purpose? and, if it should serve its purpose, what will happen? The officials of the government have become impossible; and the parliamentary government, insincere, dishonest, and devoid of capable men, seems to me no less impossible. In fact, to me the future, and I might say the present, is as gloomy as it is possible to be.