I have received from Russia an enormous history of Peter the Great, compiled from a quantity of official documents, hitherto unpublished. I read and I paint whenever we are not walking or eating. It seems to me that everything tends in the direction of peace. It is very evident that M. de Bismarck is a great man, and he is too well prepared for any one to quarrel with him. We shall have, perhaps, many bitter pills to swallow, and these we shall digest until we have needle-guns. It remains to be seen what the German parliament will do, and, if the follies which they commit will not cause them to lose their advantage. As for Italy, it is never even mentioned. Good-bye dear friend. CCXCI BIARRITZ, _September 24_. I hope you may be enjoying better weather than we. Four days of the week we have rain; the others are stifling hot, accompanied by a horrible sirocco. Still, the sea is far more beautiful here than at Boulogne, and the figs and ortolans make it possible to sustain the burden of life. I made, the other day, an interesting excursion into the mountains, and saw one of the most remarkable grottoes in existence. You pass beneath a great natural bridge, made of a single arch, as long as the Pont Royal; on one side you see a wall of rocks, and on the other a tunnel, natural also, and very long. For nature, less clever than the engineers, contrived to make her bridge lengthwise, and the tunnel is the extension of this. Under the tunnel, and perpendicular to the bridge, flows a limpid stream. The proportions of all this are gigantic. The air within is very cool, and one feels as if he were a thousand leagues from humanity. I will show you a sketch of it, made on horseback. This enchanting place, which is called simply Sagarramedo, is in Spain, and if it were in the suburbs of Paris some one would make a show place of it, charge fifty centimes admission and make his fortune. In another cavern, a league’s distance from the first, but in France, we found about twenty smugglers, who sang some Basque airs in chorus, to the accompaniment of the galoubet. This is a small, shrill flageolet, which has in its tones something exceedingly wild and agreeable. The music is full of character, but mournful enough to drive the devil into the ground, like all the mountaineers’ music. As for the words, I understood only _viva emperatrica!_ of the last couplet.