... We like our new quarters very much.[51] Moreover, our living (_vin et bois y compris_) costs us about fifty francs a week less than at the Hotel Windsor, and we get a better dinner here for three francs than there for six. Moreover, everything here is French. Even the quarter of the town where we are has an indefinable Gallic flavor like the soupçon of garlic in their cookery. There are three or four regular habitués of the table (_dont trois decorés_) who seem to be scientific men; at any rate, one is a surgeon, and another who has lots of _esprit_ an _avocat_, I suspect. On parle toujours et quelquefois tous ensemble, aussi qu’a force d’écouter consciencieusement je m’habitue sans le savoir à la langue. Un beau matin je me trouve parlant à merveille débitant les mots avec toute l’insouciance d’un aqueduc qui n’a pas aucune responsabilité des eaux qu’il verse. Si je veille pendant la nuit, je m’occupe à composer des petits discours qui auraient mis le peu Massillon hors de lui d’envie. Je ne suis pas encore allé chez M. Littré, mais je te remercie beaucoup pour la lettre et la presenterai en très peu de jours. J’ai acheté une de les plumes d’or que tu m’as louées mais soit la pauvreté du papier (à très bon marché) ou bien des idées, elle refuse de marcher dans une langue aussi facile que doit lui etre la française. Since your departure, my dear boy, I have bucaneered (’tis a free translation of bouquiné, corresponding to my exploits in turning my native tongue into French--for I like to be consistent) among the stalls, but Fortune packed her trunk (the baggage!) at the same time with you, and I have not prospered much. One attribute of deity I have not arrogated presumptuously but enjoy by a privilege of nature, to wit (_à savoir_), that of confounding the counsels of the wicked, for I puzzle the dealers awfully now and then with my _discours_. I suppose it must be that I inadvertently mix in too much of l’ancien Français. ’Tis as if one should talk pure Chaucer to Burnham.[52] However, I bought the seventeen volume Byron for $40, and have sent it to my grandson’s (I mean Petit fils--you see how I am getting translated) to be bound. If it were not for this confounded pen (saving your reverence) I would write you a cheerful letter--but what can one do when it takes so long to write the first half of a sentence that one forgets the last? I assure you I had several clever things to say, but they are stuck in my pen--a very unfortunate position of things, because you will see they have gone out of my head.... _To the Same._ PARIS, 1 November, 1872.