Time flies so rapidly in this country, and the distances are so enormous, that one does not accomplish the half of what he wishes. I have just been through the Museum with the duc de Malakoff, and there are but a few minutes left to write to you. I must tell you in the first place, that for two days I was really very ill, an effect always produced on me by breathing coal smoke. Since then, however, I have felt entirely made over. I eat ravenously, and walk a great deal, but I do not sleep as much as I should like. I am in society constantly, which I do not enjoy any too well. Crinoline is not worn here as universally as it is with us; but so quickly do one’s eyes become accustomed to fashions, that I am scandalised, and the women all look as if they were dressed up in chemises. You can have no conception of the beauty of the British Museum on Sunday, when there is absolutely no one there but M. Panizzi and me. There is about it a marvellous atmosphere of devotion; only one fears that the statues may all descend from their pedestals and begin to dance the polka. I discover here not the slightest feeling of animosity against us. The general sentiment is that Bernard[16] was sentenced by small tradesmen, and that it is not extraordinary that a tradesman should embrace every occasion to harass a prince. The _Maréchal_[17] was cheered tremendously when he arrived. Good-bye, dear friend. CLXXIV LONDON, _British Museum, May 3, 1858_. I shall be in Paris, I think, on Wednesday morning. I fell, last Wednesday, into a pretty kettle of fish. I was invited to a dinner of the Literary Fund, presided over by Lord Palmerston, and just as I was starting, received notice that, inasmuch as my name had been placed opposite a toast on the literature of Continental Europe, I must be prepared to make a speech. I yielded, with the pleasure that you may imagine, and for a long quarter of an hour talked nonsense in bad English, to an assembly of three hundred men of letters, or so-called such, and more than a hundred women, admitted to the honor of observing us eat tough chicken and leathery tongue. I was never so surfeited with silliness, as M. de Pourceaugnac said. I received a visit yesterday from a lady and her husband, who brought me some autograph letters from the emperor Napoleon to Josephine, which they wished to sell. They are very singular, for their entire subject is love. They are perfectly authentic, being written on stamped paper and bearing the post-marks. What I fail to understand is why Josephine did not burn them as soon as she had read them.... CLXXV PARIS, _May 19, 1858_.