DEAR FRIEND: I found your letter yesterday, on my return from Biarritz, whence their Majesties brought me back in a fair state of preservation. The first welcome which my native land accorded me, however, was anything but cordial. Last night I suffered one of the most prolonged attacks of choking that I had experienced for weeks. It is the result, I suppose, of the change of temperature, or it may be the effect of thirteen or fourteen hours of jolting over a very rough railroad. It seemed as if I was in a winnowing-basket. This morning I am feeling better. I have not as yet seen a soul, and think no one has returned to Paris, but I have received some lugubrious letters from persons who speak of nothing but cholera, and who beg me to fly from Paris. Here no one pays any attention to it, so I am told, and the fact is, I believe that, with the exception of several old topers, there have been no serious cases. If the cholera had made its first appearance in Paris, probably we should have thought no more about it. It took the cowardice of the Marseillais to give us the warning. I have informed you of my theory on the subject of cholera; no one dies of it unless he really wishes to die, and it is a visitor so polite, that it never makes a call upon you without sending its visiting-card in advance, as the Chinese do. I spent my time most agreeably at Biarritz. We had a visit from the king and queen of Portugal. The king is a very shrinking German student. The queen is charming. She bears a strong resemblance to the princess Clotilde, but she is more beautiful. She is a revised edition. Her complexion is that of a lily and of a rose, rare even in England. Her hair is red, to be sure, but it is the dark red so fashionable just now. She is extremely engaging and polite. They brought along with them a certain number of male and female caricatures, who seemed to have been gathered up from some curiosity-shop. My friend, the Portuguese minister, took the queen aside and gave her a little tirade about me, which her Majesty immediately repeated to me with much graciousness. The emperor presented me to the king, who shook hands with me, and looked at me with two big, round, startled eyes, that made me almost fail in my duties. Another person, M. de Bismarck, pleased me more. He is a large German, very polite, and not at all unsophisticated. His manner is absolutely lacking in _gemüth_, but is full of intelligence. He conquered me completely. He brought with him a wife, who has the biggest feet beyond the Rhine, and a daughter who walks in her mother’s footsteps. I have said nothing of don Enrique or of the duke of Mecklenburg, I know not why. The Legitimist party is in a terrible state since the death of General Lamoricière. I met yesterday an Orleanist of the old school, who was also disconsolate. How cheaply, nowadays, one becomes a great man!