I told Mr. Lever what you thought of him, dearest friend, and then he said, all in a glow and animation, that you were not only his own delight but the delight of his children, which is affection by refraction, isn’t it?  Quite gratified he seemed by the hold of your good opinion.  Not only is he the notability par excellence of these Baths of Lucca, where he has lived a whole year, during the snows upon the mountains, but he presides over the weekly balls at the casino where the English ‘do congregate’ (all except Robert and me), and is said to be the light of the flambeaux and the spring of the dancers.  There is a general desolation when he will retire to play whist.  In addition to which he really seems to be loving and loveable in his family.  You always see him with his children and his wife; he drives her and her baby up and down along the only carriageable road of Lucca:  so set down that piece of domestic life on the bright side in the broad charge against married authors; now do.  I believe he is to return to Florence this winter with his family, having had enough of the mountains.  Have you read ‘Roland Cashel,’ isn’t that the name of his last novel?  The ‘Athenaeum’ said of it that it was ‘new ground,’ and praised it.  I hear that he gets a hundred pounds for each monthly number.  Oh, how glad I was to have your letter, written in such pain, read in such pleasure!  It was only fair to tell me in the last lines that the face-ache was better, to keep off a fit of remorse.  I do hope that Mr. May is not right about neuralgia, because that is more difficult to cure than pain which arises from the teeth.  Tell me how you are in all ways.  I look into your letters eagerly for news of your health, then of your spirits, which are a part of health.  The cholera makes me very frightened for my dearest people in London, and silence, the last longer than usual, ploughs up my days and nights into long furrows.  The disease rages in the neighbourhood of my husband’s family, and though Wimpole Street has been hitherto clear, who can calculate on what may be?  My head goes round to think of it.  And papa, who will keep going into that horrible city!  Even if my sisters and brothers should go into the country as every year, he will be left, he is no more movable than St. Paul’s.  My sister-in-law will probably not come to us as soon as she intended, through a consideration for her father, who ought not, Robert thinks, to stay alone in the midst of such contingencies, so perhaps we may go to seek her ourselves in the spring, if she does not seek us out before in Italy.  God keep us all, and near to one another.  Love runs dreadful risks in the world.  Yet Love is, how much the best thing in the world?  We have had a great event in our house.  Baby has cut a tooth....  His little happy laugh is always ringing through the rooms.  He is afraid of nobody or nothing in the world, and was in fits of ecstasy at the tossing of the horse’s