So far in sympathy.  In regard to the slaves, no, no, no; I belong to a family of West Indian slaveholders, and if I believed in curses, I should be afraid.  I can at least thank God that I am not an American.  How you look serenely at slavery, I cannot understand, and I distrust your power to explain.  Do you indeed?

Dear Mr. Ruskin, do let us hear from you sometimes.  It is such a great gift, a letter of yours.  Then remember that I am a spirit in prison all the winter, not able to stir out.  Up to this time we have lived perdus from all our acquaintances because of our misfortunes.  With my husband’s cordial regards, I remain most truly yours always,

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

The publishers are directed to send you the volumes on their publication.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Jameson

[Paris] 3 Rue du Colisee, Avenue des Champs-Elysees:  Saturday, December 17, 1855 [postmark].

How pleasant, dearest Mona Nina, to hear you, though the voice sounds far!  Try and come back to us soon, and let us talk, or listen, rather, to your talking.  Why shouldn’t I, too, have a sister of charity, like others?  I appeal to you.

Still, I have only good to tell you of myself.  I am better through the better weather and through our arrival in this apartment, where, as Robert says, we are as pleased as if we had never lived in a house before.  Well, I assure you the rooms are perfect in comfort and convenience; not large, but warm, and of a number and arrangement which exclude all fault-finding.  Clean, carpeted; no glitter, nothing very pretty—­not even the clocks—­but with sofas and chairs suited to lollers such as one of us, and altogether what I mean whenever I say that an ‘apartment’ on the Continent is twenty times more really ‘comfortable’ than any of your small houses in England.  Robert has a room to himself too.  It’s perfect.  I hop about from one side to the other, like a bird in a new cage.  The feathers are draggled and rough, though.  I am not strong, though the cough is quieter without the least doubt.

And this time also I shall not die, perhaps.  Indeed, I do think not.

That darling Robert carried me into the carriage, swathed past possible breathing, over face and respirator in woollen shawls.  No, he wouldn’t set me down even to walk up the fiacre steps, but shoved me in upside down, in a struggling bundle—­I struggling for breath—­he accounting to the concierge for ‘his murdered man’ (rather woman) in a way which threw me into fits of laughter afterwards to remember.  ’Elle se porte tres bien! elle se porte extremement bien.  Ce n’est rien que les poumons.’  Nothing but lungs!  No air in them, which was the worst!  Think how the concierge must have wondered ever since about ‘cet original d’Anglais,’ and the peculiar way of treating wives when they are in excellent health.  ‘Sacre.’