"It is Sunday to-day: the day for repose. So I hear no other sound than that which my pen makes on the paper. I am thinking of you. You are not so tranquil in your great Paris, except in your little chamber, where you find again Le Cayla in a more enjoyable form. When I saw yesterday the great oak of the Teoulet covered with hoar-frost, I thought of the great fir of Maurice. Nothing is more elegant than these trees in winter dress; but hurrah for their summer toilet! When one must only see trees, one loves better to have them green than white. For you, who see so many things, a little snow is nothing, and it is here a great event, especially when I used to make snowballs; but that has been for a long time a lost pleasure. Winter gives me only the sweet warmth of the chimney corner--that is the pleasure of the old. What a distance from the doll to the tongs! And there I am. And then will come spectacles, the cane, and the fall of the teeth--sad New Year's gifts! For at last the years make us all these presents. Since time brings me nothing sweet, I would willingly send back the first of the year as a tiresome creature who comes too often. As you say, It is strange that one is so gay at that period. That children are so very good, they catch bonbons; but we.... Yet if I could have New Year's gifts sometimes according to my fancy.... "I have, however, had one pleasing gift--your letter. Nothing gives me the pleasure of that. When I saw you more than ever wandering and straying in the land of the void, it is then that you show me that shut up in your room--confined to a regular work--what progress you have there made, my dear brother! Frankly, I did not expect so prompt a conversion. May God maintain it! I told you well that will is power. You have willed and have achieved; you have achieved even to the resumption of the code. I am quite content with you, and with your courage. Are you not well repaid for your first effort in seeing what it has produced? 'I now meet the day intrepidly.' It is the very thing for which you have made me wait so long, and it is that which makes me preach so much. Nothing gave me more pain than to see you so sick with life. You see how much sweeter she is when one knows how to lead her. It is for you the commencement of happiness to be able to think calmly. By little and little all will arrange itself, all will frame, all will harmonise in your existence. You will do like our old timepiece, which sounds very well when the weather is fine. Make it last, this fine weather that shines upon you now; and when the glacial discouragement shall come to fall upon you, fall again upon it as you have done already. He who gives one kick is able to give two, is able to give a thousand. I easily believe that these