The first fortnight was a little hard, I confess, now that I have obtained a very necessary modification of my duties. You know how much need I have of exercise, and how active I have been for the last six years; but here, alas! I have no house to keep in order and to run over from top to bottom a hundred times a day, no child to walk with and to make play, not even a dog with which I can run, under the pretext of amusing it. The Marchioness has a horror of animals; she goes out but once or twice a week to ride up and down the avenue of the Champs-Élysées. She calls that taking exercise. Infirm and unable to go up stairs, except with the aid of a servant's arm,--a thing dreadful enough to her, for she was once let fall in doing it,--she pays no visits, though she passes her life in receiving them. All the activity, all the vigor of her existence, is in her head, and much in her speech; she talks remarkably well and she knows it; but she is not on that account guilty of any weak vanity, and thinks less of making herself heard than of venting the ideas and sentiments which agitate her. She has, you see, an energetic nature and a singular earnestness in her opinions of all things, even of those which seem to me of very little account. She could never be quite happy; she has been seeking to be so too long; and living with her incessantly is tiresome, in spite of the attraction which she exercises. Her hands are perfectly idle; nevertheless her sight is sharp and her fingers are still nimble, for she plays tolerably upon the piano; but she eschews everything that interferes with talking and no longer asks me to read or to play. She says that she holds my talents in reserve for the country, where she finds herself more alone and whither we are to go in two months. I look forward to this change with real pleasure, as here the life of the body is too much suppressed. And then the good Marchioness has the habit of living in a temperature of Senegal, besides covering herself with perfumes, and her apartment is filled with the most odorous of flowers; they are very beautiful to see, but in the absence of air, it is not so easy a thing to breathe.