DEAR FRIEND: I thank you for your letter, and for your good wishes. I did not reply at once, because I did not have the physical strength. The cold weather, which has come upon us suddenly, is very severe, and has done me a great deal of harm. I feel a little better to-day, and take advantage of it to write to you. I am deeply discouraged; nothing does me any good. I try all the remedies, and find myself again back at the point from which I started; after a few days of relief, the disease manifests itself again as forcibly as ever. I sleep wretchedly, and with the greatest difficulty. Not only do I not eat, but all kinds of nourishment inspire in me a feeling of disgust. Nearly all day I suffer frightfully, sometimes accompanied with spasms of pain. I read with great difficulty, and frequently do not understand the words under my eyes. I have an idea of something which I should like to put into a work, but how is it possible to write in the midst of these troubles! So you see, dear friend, the situation in which I find myself. I have the certainty that a slow and painful death is to be my fate. I must become reconciled to it. The political situation, of which I understand nothing at all, is not calculated to offer me an agreeable distraction. It seems to me that we are marching on to a revolution, which will be more disastrous than the one through which we passed so blithesomely twenty years ago. I should like the performance to be delayed a little while, so that I may not attend it. It froze here at six degrees, a phenomenon which has not occurred since 1821, so say the oldest inhabitants; all the gardens have been ruined. The cold snap came just when one might have supposed it to be midsummer; the season was advanced, and everything in bloom. It was lamentable to see great, beautiful plants, full of blossoms, from seven to eight feet tall in the evening, in one night reduced to the consistency of spinach. Good-bye, dear friend. Keep well, and let me sometimes hear from you. I wish you a happy New Year.... CCCXXV CANNES, _February 10, 1870_. DEAR FRIEND: If I have not written to you for a long time, it is because I have had nothing but sad things to tell you of myself. I am more and more ailing, and the life I lead is truly miserable. I sleep hardly at all, and suffer nearly all the time I am awake. Besides, the winter has been a frightful one. All the lovely flowers which made the glory of the country have been destroyed, many of the orange-trees have been frozen, and not enough flowers are left to make you any pomade. Imagine the effect produced on a being nervous as I, by rain, hail, and cold. One suffers here ten times more from all these than he would in Paris.