Avignon, September 5, 1845.

I am grateful to those people who fell ill and detained you in Paris; and even more grateful to yourself, that is, if you think less about their rheumatism than you do of the pleasure you will give me by remaining. In all probability I shall return in a fortnight, or, rather, I shall stop over for a little while at home between my journey from the South and that North. The next one, I hope, will be but a brief one, not even long enough for you to miss me.

I am rejoiced to know that you are in such robust health. I can not say as much for myself, for I have been ill ever since I came away. I had counted on the lovely weather and warm sunshine of Languedoc to work a cure for me, but I have been disappointed. I returned yesterday in an exhausted condition from a long business errand, in which I caused more vexation than I do ordinarily, except where you are concerned. I am suffering from dizziness, and almost everything appears to my vision in double.

While you are enjoying ripe, luscious peaches, I am eating very acid yellow ones, of a singular flavour, but which are not specially unpleasant to the taste. I should like to have you try them. I am eating figs of all varieties, but have no appetite for any of these things.

The evenings are terribly lonely, and I am beginning to long for the society of bipeds of my own class. The provincials I do not consider as anybody at all. They are tiresome creatures to look at, and altogether foreign to the circle of my ideas. These Southerners are strange people: I think sometimes that they are witty, and again that they are only vivacious. They seem to me this time more unattractive than usual. As I travel this pretty country, the only thing which I should really enjoy would be to dream at my leisure, and for this I have no time. You can guess, can you not, of what I should love to dream, and with whom?

I should like to tell you several good stories, which are well worth sending two hundred leagues, but, unfortunately, none that I have heard will bear repeating.

I saw, the other day, the ravages wrought by a flood, in which a hundred and twenty sheep were drowned, and many houses swept away. You can beat that in Paris, but what you will never see there is a view comparable to that which is unfolded at every step one takes as he travels through the region of Avignon. Come and see it, or, rather, wait for me in Paris, and we will stroll in our woods, which will then be lovely. Write to me at VÉzelay (Yonne).