Cannes, November 16, 1868.

Dear Friend: I have been, and am still, very ill. The compressed-air baths, which were so beneficial to me last spring, were powerless to cure a bronchial trouble which has succeeded my asthma, and is as harassing as the latter. For six weeks I have been coughing and choking; while the numerous drugs, which I take with much docility and resignation, do not produce sufficient effect to permit me to resume my ordinary course of life. I go out only on very warm days. I sleep badly, and spend my time entertaining the blue devils.... It is at night especially that I suffer and fret the most. If I am so poorly before the winter, what will become of me when the weather is really cold? This thought preoccupies me unpleasantly. For three or four days, however, I have felt a little less miserable.

During my nights of insomnia I made a careful copy of the Trouveur de Miel,[42] with the changes which you suggested, and which seem to me to improve the story. That the bear pushed his attacks to the point of marring an illustrious genealogy, remains doubtful. At the same time, intelligent persons like yourself will understand that a very serious accident must have occurred. I sent this new edition to M. Tourguenieff, that he might revise the local colour, concerning which I am in some perplexity, but the deuce of the thing is that neither he nor I have been able to find a single Lithuanian who knows his own language and country. I had some intention of sending this tale as a fÊte-day gift to the empress, but I have resisted the temptation, and have done wisely. God only knows what that bear would have become amidst the society at CompiÈgne.

The weather is only so-so—neither cold nor windy, but with very few really beautiful days. I have been here a fortnight. The rest of the time I have been at Montpellier, where I was horribly bored....

So poor Rossini is dead. They pretended that he had done a great deal of work, although he wished to publish nothing. Pecuniary considerations, which always had great weight with him, would have been reason enough for him to publish his work, if he had really composed anything. He was one of the wittiest men I have ever seen, and nothing more marvellous has ever been heard than the air from the Barber of Seville, as sung by him. No actor could compare with him.

The last year appears to have been a fatal one for great men. They say that Lamartine and Berryer are both seriously ill.

Good-bye, dear friend. Write to me, and lose no time in leaving the damp country where you are at present. There is no such thing as a warm house in the country.

If you know some amusing book, tell me what it is, I pray you.