"Sir:--Since our separation, I have had this pleasure (_heut_) to hear news of you only once, having found your brother in Paris; who, having assured me of your good health (_disposition_), informed me of how since we had seen each other you had travelled to Italy, even as far as Greece, of which you had seen a large portion: and that sound and safe, after so long a journey, you had reappeared and landed at Havre de Grace where you wished to go, that is to say at home. All the pleasure which a friend can receive, knowing the affairs of another self, joined to such a happy result, seized my heart, at the recital of such agreeable news: and I did not fail shortly after, to write you amply all which had happened to me since I left you until my return to France: congratulating you at having escaped from marine abysses and perilous passages on land, on which travellers are often constrained to risk their life. From this time, I have always stayed in Paris or in the neighborhood, according to the good pleasure of dame fortune, who ruled me in her wise and fed me with her dishes the most common and ordinary until the first day of January of the year 1584, when I received my first gift in the shape of a strong and violent disease, which tormented me more than a month: from which, having become cured with the help of God, and having with time recovered my health and my strength at the arrival of spring, I was seized with the desire to smell the air of the country. And in fact having thrown away my pen and travelled about (_battu l'estrade_) through high and low Burgundy, I stopped at Bezenson, Imperial City, to spend the summer. This city is still to day just the same as Julius Cæsar describes it, in the notable mention he makes of it, in the first book of his commentaries of the war in Gaul, there remaining there all the vestiges of the most remarkable things, which he tells of in his description. There are also very fine fountains, from all of which water streams from the representation of some god of antiquity, as a Neptune, a Bacchus, a Pan, a Nereide or others: except before the state house, where the statue of Charles the Fifth, representing him in a most natural manner, is placed on an eagle, which from its beak, pours out such a great quantity of water that this is the most beautiful, among all the other fountains. And as I do not doubt that while traversing Italy, you both saw and examined with curiosity the most handsome singularities, which presented themselves to your eyes and that on your return, passing through Avignon and Dauphiné, as your brother informed me, you had the advantage over me of seeing the wonders of the country, of which you had heard me speak sometimes, regretting that the war, during the time I was in that quarter, had prevented my going to the spot, to see the burning fountain as in Dodone, and the fountain called Jupiter, which torches of fire light up and which grows less till midday and