Genoa, September 10, 1858.

On my arrival here I found your letter of the 1st, which I acknowledge gratefully. You make no mention of one which I wrote you from Brescia about the first of this month. In it I said that I had left Venice with regret, and that I was thinking of you constantly.

Lake Como was charming. I stopped at Bellagio. In a little villa by the lake shore I found Madame Pasta, whom I had not seen since the days of her triumphs in the Italian Opera. She has increased singularly in width. She is now cultivating her cabbages, and says she is as happy as when we used to throw crowns and sonnets to her. We talked of music, the drama, and she said something that struck me as very true, which was that since Rossini no one had written an opera of any unity, of which all the parts held together. All that Verdi and his associates have done resembles a harlequin’s costume.

The weather is magnificent, and this evening the boat leaves for Leghorn. I am tempted strongly to go to Florence for a week, returning by way of Genoa, and probably by the Corniche. If, however, I should receive any letters of importance, I might take the Turin route, and reach Paris in thirty hours. In any case, I shall expect to see you there October 1st. Be kind enough not to forget, or you will put me to the necessity of going to search for you along your sea-shore.

You say nothing about Grenoble spinach, or the fifty-three ways of serving it, customary in Dauphiny. Is any one left who used to know Beyle? I received some time ago a very witty letter, full of anecdotes about him, from a man whose name I have forgotten, but who, I believe, is registrar of the Imperial Court. Formerly, there was still some sense of humour in the provinces, as in the period of the president de Brosses; now, however, not even an idea is to be found there. The railroads are hastening the process of mental paralysis, and I am confident that, in twenty years from now, reading will be a lost art....