Boulogne, March 28. DEAR PEN,—I have finished Belisarius, and he has gone to face the Academicians. There is another little thing I sent—“Blondel” I call it—a troubadour playing under a castle wall. They have not much chance; but there is always the little print-shop in Long Acre. My sketches of mail-coaches continue to please the public; they have raised the price to a guinea. Here we are not happier than when you visited us. My poor wife is no better. It is something to have put my father out of hearing of her mother’s tongue: that cannot cross the Channel. Perhaps I am as well here as in town. There I always hope, I always fear to meet _her_ . . . my cousin, you know. I think I see her face under every bonnet. God knows I don’t go where she is likely to be met. Oh, Pen, _hæret lethalis arundo_; it is always right—the Latin Delectus! Everything I see is full of her, everything I do is done for her. “Perhaps she’ll see it and know the hand, and remember,” I think, even when I do the mail-coaches and the milestones. I used to draw for her at Brighton when she was a child. My sketches, my pictures, are always making that silent piteous appeal to her, _Won’t you look at us_? _won’t you remember_? I dare say she has quite forgotten. Here I send you a little set of rhymes; my picture of Blondel and this old story brought them into my mind. They are _gazés_, as the drunk painter says in “Gerfaut;” they are veiled, a mystery. I know she’s not in a castle or a tower or a cloistered cell anywhere; she is in Park Lane. Don’t I read it in the “Morning Post?” But I can’t, I won’t, go and sing at the area-gate, you know. Try if F. B. will put the rhymes into the paper. Do they take it in in Park Lane? See whether you can get me a guinea for these tears of mine: “Mes Larmes,” Pen, do you remember?—Yours ever, C. N. The verses are enclosed. THE NEW BLONDEL. _O ma Reine_! Although the Minstrel’s lost you long, Although for bread the Minstrel sings, Ah, still for you he pipes the song, And thrums upon the crazy strings! As Blondel sang by cot and hall, Through town and stream and forest passed, And found, at length, the dungeon wall, And freed the Lion-heart at last— So must your hapless minstrel fare, By hill and hollow violing; He flings a ditty on the air, He wonders if you hear him sing! For in some castle you must dwell Of this wide land he wanders through— In palace, tower, or cloistered cell— He knows not; but he sings to _you_! The wind may blow it to your ear, And you, perchance, may understand; But from your lattice, though you hear, He knows you will not wave a hand.