"Why I wished to write to you, or why I write at all--which, however, I do decorously at the side of my father--are questions which I have not taken the trouble of asking until this moment. But I am in Switzerland, where no one has time for any thing but worshipping mountain-tops, and falling down at the feet of cataracts. Whether it would add to Mr Marston's satisfaction I cannot presume to say, but I feel better, much better, than when I first came into this land of fresh breezes and beauty of all kinds--the population, of every rank, always excepted. If I were, like you, a philosopher, I should probably say that nature gets tired of her work, and after having struck off some part of it with all the spirit of an Italian painter, disdains the trouble of finishing; or, like a French 'fashionable,' coquettes with her own charms, and is determined to make the world adore her, in spite of her slippers and her shawl. Thus, nature, which gave the peacock a diadem on its head, and a throne in its tail, has given it a pair of frightful legs. And on the same charming principle, she has given Switzerland the finest of all possible landscapes, and filled them with the most startling of all possible physiognomies. "But no more of theory. It has always made my head ache, and headachs are, I know, contagious; so I spare you. Yet, have you a moment, among your thousand and one avocations, to remember my father--or me? I beg that I may not impede the march of armies, or shock the balance of Europe, while I solicit you to give me a single line--no more; a mere 'annonce' of any thing that can tell me of your 'introuvable' friend Lafontaine. This is _not_ for myself. The intelligence is required for a sister of his whom I have lately met in this country--a showy "citizeness" of Zurich, _embonpoint_ and matronly, married to one of the portly burghers of the city, and exemplary in all the arts of sheep-shearing, wool-spinning, and cheese-making; a mother, surrounded _a la Francaise_ with a host of Orlandos, Hyacintes, Aristomenes, and Apollos--pretty children, with the Frenchman developing in all its gaudiness; the Switzer remaining behind, until it shall come forth in cloudy brows, and a face stamped with money-making. Madame Spiegler is still not beyond a waltz, and in the very whirl of one last night, she turned to me and _implored_ that I should 'move heaven and earth,' as she termed it--with her blue eyes thrown up to the chandelier, and her remarkably pretty and well-_chausse'd_ feet still beating time to the dance--to bring her disconsolate bosom tidings of her '_frere, si bien aime, si malheureux_.' I promised, and she flew off instantly into the very _core_ of a dance, consisting of at least a hundred couples.