You have promised to give me a minute and circumstantial description of quantities of interesting things which I am unable to see. Thanks to the privileges of your sex, you have access to the harems and may converse with the women. I should like to know how they are dressed, what they do, what they say, what they think of you. You have mentioned, also, the dances. I fancy they are immensely more interesting than those one sees in Paris ball-rooms, but you will be obliged to describe them with the utmost exactness. Do you understand the significance of what you see? You are aware that everything which bears on the history of mankind is full of interest to me. Why will you not put on paper all you see and hear? I do not know whether we are to go to Compiègne this year. They tell me the empress, whom I have not seen, is still in the depths of woe. She sent me a charming photograph of the duchess of Alba, taken more than twenty-four hours after her death. She appears to be sleeping tranquilly. Her death was very peaceful. She laughed at the Valencian dialect of her waiting-women five minutes before she died. I have heard no direct news from Madame de Montijo since her departure, but I have grave fears that the poor woman will not recover from this blow. I am deep in a great academic intrigue. It has nothing to do with the French Academy, but with the Academy of Fine Arts. A friend of mine is a preferred candidate, but his Majesty has compelled him to decline, to give place to M. Haussmann, the prefect. The Academy is indignant, and wishes to nominate my friend, notwithstanding his withdrawal. I am giving it all the encouragement in my power, and should like to be able to tell the emperor the harm he is doing in meddling in affairs that do not concern him. I hope I shall succeed in the end, and that the big colossus will be black-balled in good fashion. Italian affairs are most amusing, and what is said among the few honest folk in Paris is still more diverting. We are beginning to see the arrival of a few of the martyrs of Castilfidardo. As a general thing they do not speak too enthusiastically of Lamoricière, who could not have been as great a hero as he was advertised. I saw, a few days ago, the aunt of a young eighteen-year-old martyr who had been made prisoner. She told me that the Piedmontese had treated her nephew abominably. I waited to hear her relate something horrible. “Only fancy, monsieur, five minutes after being made a prisoner the poor boy had his watch taken from him--a gold hunting-case watch, too, that I had given him!” Good-bye, dear friend. Write to me often. Tell me what you are doing, and many details. CCXXVII PARIS, _October 24, 1860_.