Paris, June 24, 1866.

What has become of you? The cholera, it seems, is very bad at Amiens. I do not know what is in store for us at the Luxembourg, and it may be that the Senate-Council, with which we are threatened, will oblige me to return here until the middle of the month.

To console myself, I have bought the twenty-seven volumes of the MÉmoires du XVIII^e SiÈcle, which I shall have bound. Is there in them anything which you would like? Your Klincksieck has nothing that one asks for; I shall inquire of Vieweg, who may have, perhaps, what I want. Unfortunately, the edition of the MÉmoires de F. Auguste, which was published in Leipzig, is in the hands of M. de Bismarck.

I was surprised to receive the book you returned to me. I was afraid that you had added it to those which you have already taken from me. When will you come and choose another? In spite of the heat, I am far from well.

You asked me, the other day, where I formed my acquaintance with the dialects of the Bohemians. I had so many things to say to you that I forgot to answer. I obtained it from M. Borrow; his book is one of the most curious that I have ever read. What he retails of the Bohemians is perfectly true, and his personal observations agree entirely with mine, except on one point. In his quality as a clergyman he might well have been mistaken, where, in my quality as a Frenchman and a layman I could make conclusive experiments. What is most singular is that this man, who has a gift for languages to the degree that he speaks the Cali dialects, has so little perspicacity that he is unable to see at the outset that in this dialect have remained many words foreign to the Spanish. He pretends that the roots only of Sanskrit words have been retained....

I like the odour of that perfume, but I like it less since I have known that the friend who gave it to you sees you so often.