To Mademoiselle Germaine de Freydet, Clos Jallanges, near Mousseaux, Loir et Cher. My dear Sister,--I am going to give you a precise account of the way I spend my time in Paris. I shall write every evening, and send you the budget twice a week, as long as I stay here. Well, I arrived this morning, Monday, and took up my quarters as usual in my quiet little hotel in the Rue Servandoni, where the only sounds of the great city which reach me are the bells of Saint Sulpice, and the continual noise from a neighbouring forge, a sound of the rhythmical beating of iron, which I love because it reminds me of our village. I rushed off at once to my publisher. ‘Well, when do we come out?’ ‘Your book? Why, it came out a week ago.’ Come out, indeed, and gone in too--gone into the depths of that grim establishment of Manivet’s, which never ceases to pant and to reek with the labour of giving birth to a new volume. This Monday, as it happened, they were just sending out a great novel by Herscher, called _Satyra_. The copies struck off--how many hundreds of thousands of them I don’t know--were lying in stacks and heaps right up to the very top of the establishment. You can fancy the preoccupation of the staff, and the lost bewildered look of worthy Manivet himself, when I mentioned my poor little volume of verse, and talked of my chances for the Boisseau prize. I asked for a few copies to leave with the members of the committee of award, and made my escape through _streets_--literally streets--of _Satyra_, piled up to the ceiling. When I got into my cab, I looked at my volume and turned over the pages. I was quite pleased with the solemn effect of the title, ‘God in Nature.’ The capitals are perhaps a trifle thin, when you come to look at them, not quite as black and impressive to the eye as they might be. But it does not matter. Your pretty name, ‘Germaine,’ in the dedication will bring us luck. I left a couple of copies at the Astiers’ in the Rue de Beaune. You know they no longer occupy their rooms at the Foreign Office. But Madame Astier has still her ‘Wednesdays.’ So of course I wait till Wednesday to hear what my old master thinks of the book; and off I went to the Institute.