What a beautiful Paris it is! I walked out a little yesterday with Robert, and we both felt penetrated with the sentiment of southern life as we watched men, women, and children sitting out in the sun, taking wine and coffee, and enjoying their _fête_ day with good happy faces. The mixture of classes is to me one of the most delicious features of the South, and you have it here exactly as in Italy. The colouring too, the brightness, even the sun--oh, come and enjoy it all with us. We have had a most splendid spring beginning with February. Still, I have been out very seldom, being afraid of treacherous winds combined with burning sunshine, but I have enjoyed the weather in the house and by opening the windows, and have been revived and strengthened much by it, and shall soon recover my summer power of walking, I dare say. What do you think I did the other night? Went to the Vaudeville to see the 'Dame aux Camélias' on above the fiftieth night of the representation. I disagree with the common outcry about its immorality. According to my view, it is moral and human. But I never will go to see it again, for it almost broke my heart and split my head. I had a headache afterwards for twenty-four hours. Even Robert, who gives himself out for _blasé_ on dramatic matters, couldn't keep the tears from rolling down his cheeks. The exquisite acting, the too literal truth to nature everywhere, was _exasperating_--there was something profane in such familiar handling of life and death. Art has no business with real graveclothes when she wants tragic drapery--has she? It was too much altogether like a bull fight. There's a caricature at the shop windows of the effect produced, the pit protecting itself with multitudinous umbrellas from the tears of the boxes. This play is by Alexandre Dumas _fils_--and is worthy by its talent of Alexandre Dumas _père_. Only that once have I been in a Parisian theatre. I couldn't go even to see 'Les Vacances de Pandolphe' when George Sand had the goodness to send us tickets for the first night. She failed in it, I am sorry to say--it did not 'draw,' as the phrase is. Now she has left Paris, but is likely to return. I am sure it will do you great good to have change and liberty and distraction in various ways. The '_anxiety_' you speak of--oh, I do hope it does not relate to Gerardine. I always think of her when you seem anxious. I shall be very glad if, when you come, you should be inclined to give your attention, you with your honest and vigorous mind, to the facts of the political situation, not the facts as you hear them from the English, or from our friend Madme Mohl, who confessed to me one day that she liked exaggerations because she hated the President. She is a clever shrewd woman, but most eminently and on all subjects a woman; her passions having her thoughts inside them, instead of her thoughts her passions. That's the common distinction between women and men, is it not?