Paris, Monday evening, January 20, 1858.

It is a century since I saw you. ‘Tis true that many things have happened in the interval. I am consumed with the wish to know what you think of it all. My cold and influenza are somewhat improved, and the credit of my cure I attribute to our last walk. It is not unlike the lance of Achilles.

Have you read Doctor Antonio? It is an English novel which has achieved no little success among English fashionable society, and which I read while at Cannes. It is the work of M. Orsini. There will be, no doubt, a new edition in London, and you must read it. To tell the truth, it is not very clever.

Write to me soon, I pray you, for I need to see you to make me forget all the miseries of this world.