Marseilles, September 12, 1852.

... I went to Touraine, where I visited Chambord in a beating rain, and Saint Aignan in showers of rain. I returned to Paris in the rain the 7th, left the same day in a storm, and came down the RhÔne through a fog which was thick enough to cut. Not until I reached CanebiÈre did I see the sun once more, and for the last two days it has shone in all its glory. I found there (in Marseilles, not in the sun) my cousin and his wife. I went yesterday to see them off on the Leonidas upon a sea of heavenly blue, and in weather neither cold nor warm. You, who live in the dreary climate of the North, have no conception of such a temperature as this. These are my only living relatives, and are the owners of that salon which you condescended to honour with your approval.

When I saw the last curl of smoke from the Leonidas vanish behind the islands which the descriptions in Monte Cristo have made familiar to you, I was seized with a feeling of desolation and dejection, and felt as if I were an old fogy. I needed your presence, and thought how you would delight in this country which seems to me so dull. I would have you eat twenty different varieties of fruit that you have never tasted: for instance, yellow peaches, white and red melons, medlars, and ripe pistachio nuts. Moreover, you could spent an entire day in the Turkish bazaars and other curiosity shops, where there are many useless articles most fascinating to see and most disheartening to pay for.

I have asked myself often why you have never come to the south of France, and I can find no good reason. I am going to make a three days’ excursion through the mountains, with no companion, and without meeting with a French-speaking biped. I am not sure if, after all, this is not preferable to intercourse with the provincial townspeople, who seem every year to become more intolerable.

Here the mayor and the prefects have lost their heads over the proposed visit of the President. The prefectures are all being scraped and scrubbed, and eagles are set up in every spot where they can perch. There is no absurdity of which they do not think. What amusing people they are! In the midst of all this, I fear the proofs of DÉmÉtrius will be lost: I ought to correct them while I am away, and they have not yet arrived....