I know nothing of my works, and, if you have learned anything about them, I should be obliged if you would tell me. I corrected my proofs for the _Journal des Savants_, and for Michel Levy, and I have had no word from either of them. The number of English here becomes daily more frightful. A new hatch has been built on the sea-shore, which is almost as large as the Louvre, and it is always full. You can not take a walk without meeting young misses in Garibaldi jackets, with impossible feather-trimmed hats, making a pretence at sketching. They have croquet and archery parties, to which come a hundred and twenty persons. I regret keenly the good old times when not a soul came here. I have made the acquaintance of a tame seagull, which I feed with fish. He catches them in the air, always head first, and swallows some which are larger than my neck. Do you recollect an ostrich at the Jardin des Plantes, which you came near strangling with rye bread in the time when you used to adorn the place with your presence? Good-bye, dear friend. I expect to return soon to Paris, and to have the great happiness of seeing you there. Again good-bye.... CCLXXX CANNES, _April 14, 1865_. DEAR FRIEND: I have delayed writing to you until I should be well, or, at least less ill; but notwithstanding the lovely weather, notwithstanding every possible attention, I am still the same--that is to say, very bad. I can not accustom myself to this life of suffering, and I have neither courage nor resignation to endure it. I am waiting until the weather becomes a little warmer before returning to Paris, and it will probably be the first of May before I arrive. Here, for the last fortnight, we have had the most glorious skies, and a sea to correspond, but it does not keep me from coughing as if it were still freezing weather. What has become of you this spring? Shall I find you in Paris, or are you going to ----, to watch the budding of the first leaves? So your friend Paradol becomes an Academician by the will of the burgraves, who, in fact, have compelled the poor duc de Broglie to return to Paris, in spite of his gout and his eighty years. It will be a curious session. Ampère has written a wretchedly poor history of Caesar, and in verse, in the bargain. You may imagine all the allusions which M. Paradol will find occasion to make to this work, forgotten to-day by everybody except the burgraves. Jules Janin remained without, and also my friend Autran, who being from Marseilles, for no other reason than to be elected to the Academy, became a clerical, and was after all deserted by his religious friends. You knew, perhaps, that Mr. William Brougham, brother of lord Brougham, and next in line to the peerage, has just been caught in the act of a very ugly piece of cheating. It is creating a tremendous scandal here among the English colony. Lord Brougham shows a bold front; he is, besides, perfectly innocent in all this villainy.