We float in a sea of fêtes. Yesterday the beautiful Marchioness gave her's; to-day was the admired Princess L----'s, which lasted till six o'clock. People are busied from morning till night in amusing the Prince. It is agreeable enough to be this privileged sort of person, whom the highest and the lowest, the wisest and the silliest, are all doing their utmost to please. In the midst of this 'trouble' I received another letter from you through L----, and rejoiced in the hundred-thousandth assurance of your love, an assurance of which I shall certainly not be tired before the millionth, and shall then exclaim, 'L'appétit vient en mangeant!' Just as little tired, it seems, are people here with these fêtes. While the dark clouds are gathering heavier and heavier around their horizon, our diplomates dance and dine, and meet the threatening storm with jests and laughter; and the great and the elevated are mingled with the vulgar and the common place, as in Shakespeare's faithful mirrors of life. My own spirits are favourably excited by all this, and my mind is in a healthy and vigorous state. My masculine soul (for I have a feminine one of my own, besides yours, which belongs to me) is just now 'du jour;' and when that is the case, I always feel more free and independent, and less sensitive to external influences. This state of mind is quite the right one for a residence here, for Englishmen are like their flints,--cold, angular, and furnished with cutting edges; but the steel succeeds in striking live sparks out of them, thus producing light by a friendly antagonism. Generally speaking, I am too indolent, or rather, too little excited by them, to be either willing or able to act as steel to any of the individuals who surround me; but I have, at least, opposed to their pride still greater pride, and thus softened some and repulsed others. Both were just what I wished; for the craniologist said of me very truly, that I was endowed with a strong tendency to creativeness; and such minds can only love those which act with the same elective affinities as themselves; or those which, in a subordinate station, are useful instruments on which to play the melodies of their own composition. All others are either opposite to, or remote from them. _Jan. 11th._