Kindest loves from all to your dear sister, Kate and the darlings. It is blowing a gale here from the south-west and raining like mad. Ever most affectionately. [Sidenote: Mrs. Charles Dickens.] 2, RUE ST. FLORENTIN, _Tuesday, Oct. 16th, 1855._ MY DEAREST CATHERINE, We have had the most awful job to find a place that would in the least suit us, for Paris is perfectly full, and there is nothing to be got at any sane price. However, we have found two apartments--an _entresol_ and a first floor, with a kitchen and servants' room at the top of the house, at No. 49, Avenue des Champs Elysées. You must be prepared for a regular Continental abode. There is only one window in each room, but the front apartments all look upon the main street of the Champs Elysées, and the view is delightfully cheerful. There are also plenty of rooms. They are not over and above well furnished, but by changing furniture from rooms we don't care for to rooms we _do_ care for, we shall be able to make them home-like and presentable. I think the situation itself almost the finest in Paris; and the children will have a window from which to look on the busy life outside. We could have got a beautiful apartment in the Rue Faubourg St. Honoré for a very little more, most elegantly furnished; but the greater part of it was on a courtyard, and it would never have done for the children. This, that I have taken for six months, is seven hundred francs per month, and twenty more for the _concierge_. What you have to expect is a regular French residence, which a little habitation will make pretty and comfortable, with nothing showy in it, but with plenty of rooms, and with that wonderful street in which the Barrière de l'Étoile stands outside. The amount of rooms is the great thing, and I believe it to be the place best suited for us, at a not unreasonable price in Paris. Georgina and Lady Olliffe[22] send their loves. Georgina and I add ours to Mamey, Katey, the Plorn, and Harry. Ever affectionately. [Sidenote: Mr. W. H. Wills.] 49, AVENUE DES CHAMPS ELYSÉES, PARIS, _Friday, Oct. 19th, 1855._ MY DEAR WILLS, After going through unheard-of bedevilments (of which you shall have further particulars as soon as I come right side upwards, which may happen in a day or two), we are at last established here in a series of closets, but a great many of them, with all Paris perpetually passing under the windows. Letters may have been wandering after me to that home in the Rue de Balzac, which is to be the subject of more lawsuits between the man who let it to me and the man who wouldn't let me have possession, than any other house that ever was built. But I have had no letters at all, and have been--ha, ha!--a maniac since last Monday.