I ought to have written to you long since, but you know I am not fond of writing. I really, also, have nothing to say. Happy the people who have no history. I am like that people. I was made happy two weeks ago; I have been happy ever since. It is slightly monotonous. How can you vary happiness except by quarrelling a little? And then it would not be happiness any longer. It seems to me that happiness is like an omelet, best impromptu. Do not think that I am ungrateful, however, either to fate or to the charming innocent who has become my companion. We have not two ideas in common. She is lovely to look at, to caress, to adore; but what to say to her I confess I have no notion. Love ought never have to find dinner-table conversation. He ought to climb up by a ladder and get over a balcony, and when his ecstasies are ended, he ought to go the same way. I fancy she is cleverer than I am; but, as that would be a discovery fatal to our comfort, I endeavor not to make it. She is extraordinarily sweet-tempered; indeed, so much so that it makes me angry; it gives one no excuse for being impatient. She is divine, exquisite, nymph-like; but, alas, she is a prude! Never was any creature on earth so exquisitely sensitive, so easily shocked. To live with her is to walk upon egg-shells. Of course it is very nice in a wife,--very "proper," as the English say; but it is not amusing. It amused me at first, but now it seems to me a defect. She has brought me down to this terribly damp and very green place, where it rains every day and night. There is a library without novels; there is a cellar without absinthe; there is a _cuisine_ without tomatoes, or garlic, or any oil at all; there is an admirably-ordered establishment, so quiet that I fancy I am in a penitentiary. There are some adorably fine horses, and there are acres of glass houses used to grow fruits that we throw in Italy to the pigs. By the way, there are also several of our field-flowers in the conservatories. We eat pretty nearly all day; there is nothing else to do. Outside, the scenery is oppressively green, the green of spinach; there is no variety; there are no ilexes, and there are no olives. I understand now why the English painters give such staring colors; unless the colors scream, you don't see them in this aqueous, dim atmosphere. That is why a benign Providence has made the landscape _aux épinards_. I think the air here, inside and out, must weigh heavily; it lies on one's lungs like a sponge. I once went down in a diving-bell when I was a boy; I have the sensation in this country of being always down in a diving-bell. The scamp Toniello, whom you may remember as having played Leporello to my Don Giovanno ever since we were lads, amuses himself with making love to all the pretty maidens in the village; but, then, I must not do that--now. They are not very pretty, either. They have very big teeth, and very long upper lips. Their skins, however, are admirable.