little grotesque no doubt;--the mechanical admiration for all that is about her, for the general atmosphere; the _Figaro_, that is to say Albert Wolf, _l'homme le plus spirituel de Paris, c'est-à-dire, dans le monde_, the success of Georges Ohnet and the talent of Gustave Doré. But with all this vulgarity of taste certain appreciations, certain ebullitions of sentiment, within the radius of sentiment certain elevations and depravities,--depravities in the legitimate sense of the word, that is to say, a revolt against the commonplace.... Ha, ha, ha! how I have been dreaming! I wish I had not been awoke from my reverie, it was pleasant. The letter just read indicates, if it does not clearly tell, the changes that have taken place in my life; and it is only necessary to say that one morning, a few months ago, when my servant brought me some summer honey and a glass of milk to my bedside, she handed me an unpleasant letter. My agent's handwriting, even when I knew the envelope contained a cheque, has never quite failed to produce a sensation of repugnance in me;--so hateful is any sort of account, that I avoid as much as possible even knowing how I stand at my banker's. Therefore the odour of honey and milk, so evocative of fresh flowers and fields, was spoilt that morning for me; and it was some time before I slipped on that beautiful Japanese dressing-gown, which I shall never see again, and read the odious epistle. That some wretched farmers and miners should refuse to starve, that I may not be deprived of my _demi-tasse_ at _Tortoni's_, that I may not be forced to leave this beautiful retreat, my cat and my python--monstrous. And these wretched creatures will find moral support in England; they will find pity! Pity, that most vile of all vile virtues, has never been known to me. The great pagan world I love knew it not. Now the world proposes to interrupt the terrible austere laws of nature which ordain that the weak shall be trampled upon, shall be ground into death and dust, that the strong shall be really strong,--that the strong shall be glorious, sublime. A little bourgeois comfort, a little bourgeois sense of right, cry the moderns.