The weather is exquisite, and I am going out to walk directly.  It is scarcely possible to bear a fire, and some of our friends sit with the window open.  We are all well.

This should have gone to you yesterday, but we had visitors who talked past post time.  The delay, however, has allowed of my writing more than I meant to have done in beginning this letter.  Robert’s best love.

Your ever affectionate
BA.

Robert says that according to the impression of the wisest there can be no danger.  Don’t wait till after the elections.  The time is most interesting, and it is well worth your while to come and see for yourself.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Martin

[Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysees:  December 11, [1851].

To show how alive I am, dearest Mrs. Martin, I will tell you that I have just come home from a long walk to the Tuileries.  We took a carriage to return, that’s true.  Then yesterday I was out, besides, and last Saturday, the 6th, we drove down the boulevards to see the field of action on the terrible Thursday (the only day on which there was any fighting of consequence), counting the holes in the walls bored by the cannon, and looking at the windows smashed in.  Even then, though the asphalte was black with crowds, the quiet was absolute, and most of the shops reopened.  On Sunday the theatres were as full as usual, and our Champs-Elysees had quite its complement of promenaders.  Wiedeman’s prophecy had not been carried out, any more than the prophecies of the wiser may—­the soldiers had not shot Punch.

And now I do beg you not to be down-hearted.  See, if French blood runs in your veins, that you don’t take a pedantic view of this question like an Englishwoman.  Constitutional forms and essential principles of liberty are so associated in England, that they are apt to be confounded, and are, in fact, constantly confounded.  For my part, I am too good a democrat to be afraid of being thrown back upon the primitive popular element, from impossible paper constitutions and unrepresenting representative assemblies.  The situation was in a deadlock, and all the conflicting parties were full of dangerous hope of taking advantage of it; and I don’t see, for my part, what better could be done for the French nation than to sweep the board clear and bid them begin again.  With no sort of prejudice in favour of Louis Napoleon (except, I confess to you, some artistical admiration for the consummate ability and courage shown in his coup d’etat), with no particular faith in the purity of his patriotism, I yet hold him justified so far, that is, I hold that a pure patriot would be perfectly justifiable in taking the same steps which up to this moment he has taken.  He has broken, certainly, the husk of an oath, but fidelity to the intention of it seems to me reconcilable with the breach; and if he had not felt that he had the