Biarritz, August 4th, 1862.

I am afraid I have caused some confusion in our correspondence, as I induced you to write too soon to places where I have not yet arrived.  It will be better for you to address your letters to Paris, just as though I were there; the embassy then sends them after me, and I can more quickly send word there if I alter my route.  Yesterday evening I returned from St. Sebastian to Bayonne, where I slept, and am now sitting here in a corner-room of the Hotel de l’Europe, with charming view on the blue sea, which drives its white foam through the curious cliffs against the lighthouse.  I have a bad conscience for seeing so many beautiful things without you.  If one could transport you here through the air, I would go directly back again to St. Sebastian, and take you with me.  Fancy the Siebengebirge with the Drachenfels placed by the sea; close by, Ehrenbreitstein, and between the two, pushing its way into the land, an arm of the sea, somewhat broader than the Rhine, and forming a round bay behind the mountains.  In this you bathe in transparently clear water, so heavy and so salt that you swim on the top of it by yourself, and look through the broad gate of rocks into the sea, or landward where the mountain chains top each other, always higher, always bluer.

The women of the middle and lower classes are strikingly pretty, occasionally beautiful; the men surly and uncivil; and the comforts of life to which we are accustomed are missing.  The heat is not worse here than there, and I do not mind it; find myself, on the contrary, very well, thank God.  The day before yesterday there was a storm, such as I have never seen anything like.  I had to take a run three times before I could succeed in getting up a flight of three steps on the jetty; pieces of stone and large fragments of trees were carried through the air.  Unfortunately, therefore, I countermanded my place in a sailing vessel to Bayonne, for I could not suppose that after four hours all would be quiet and cheerful.  I lost thus a charming sail along the coast, remained a day more at St. Sebastian, and left yesterday in the diligence, rather uncomfortably packed between nice little Spanish women, with whom I could not talk a syllable.  So much Italian, however, they understood that I could demonstrate to them my satisfaction with their exterior.  I looked to-day at a railway guide to see how I could get from here—­that is, from Toulouse—­by railway over Marseilles to Nice, then by boat to Genoa; from there over Venice, Trieste, Vienna, Breslau, Posen, Stargard to Coeslin!  If it were only possible to go over Berlin!  I cannot very well pass through there just now.

TO HIS WIFE

HOHENMAUTH, Monday, July 9th, 1866.