I have an extremely curious book, which I will lend you if you are good and kind to me. It is an account of a trial of the Seventeenth Century, related by an imbecile. A nun belonging to his Majesty’s family was in love with a Milanese gentleman, and as there were other nuns to whom this was displeasing, they killed her, aided by her lover. It is highly edifying, and, as an exponent of the morals of the time, very interesting. Read _Une Saison à Paris_, by Madame de ----. She is a person abounding in candour, who felt a keen desire to make herself agreeable to his majesty, and said so to him at a ball in terms so categoric and so definite, that nobody in the world, except yourself, would have failed to understand her. He was so astounded that he found nothing to say in reply, and it was only after three days, so they say, that he repulsed her. I can imagine you making the sign of the cross and that horrified face with which I am so familiar. Have you read Renan’s _Life of Jesus_? Probably not. It is a small book, but full of import. ‘Tis like a great blow of an axe on the edifice of Catholicism. The author is so terrified by his own audacity in denying the divinity of Christ, that he loses himself in hymns of praise and adoration, until he has no longer the philosophic understanding which enables him to decide on questions of doctrine. It is interesting, however, and if you have not already done so, you will read it with pleasure. I have my packing to do, and so I must leave you. My address until the new order is established will be Villa Eugénie, Biarritz (Basses-Pyrénées). Write to me quickly. Good-bye. CCLXVII CANNES, _October 19, 1863_. DEAR FRIEND: I have been here a week, resting in the desert from the fatigues of the court. The weather is magnificent. I see in the paper that your Loire is overflowing its banks; from which I conclude that you are having frightful storms, and I pity you from the bottom of my heart. I shall enjoy Provence but a fortnight longer, as I must return for the opening of the session. I am not sanguine over it. The death of M. Billault makes it an unpropitious beginning. For some time past I have talked assiduously, preached and persuaded M. Thiers to preach likewise, but I do not know what will be the result. It seems to me that we are drawing nearer and nearer our former parliamentary course, and that we are about to repeat once more the cycle of the same mistakes, and perhaps the same catastrophes. See, in addition, the strenuous efforts on the part of the clericals to make themselves detested, and to stretch the cord until it snaps. All this is enough to make one pessimistic concerning the future.