is greater calm; that presently there will be relaxation where there is stringency, and room to breathe and speak.  At present it is a dictatorship, and we can’t expect at such a time the ease and liberty of a regular government.  The constitution itself may be modified, as the very terms of it imply, and the laws of the Press not carried out.  Even as it is, all the English papers, infamous in their abuse of the Government (because of their falsifications and exaggerations properly called infamous) and highly immoral in their tone towards France generally, come in as usual, without an official finger being lifted up to hinder them.  Louis Philippe would not admit Punch, you remember, on account of a few personal sarcasms....

So much there is to say, and the post going.  Can you read as I write on at a full gallop?  Don’t be out of heart.  Do let us trust France—­not L. Napoleon, but France....

Dearest friends, think of me as your

Ever affectionate
BA.

* * * * *

To Miss Mitford

[Paris], 138 Avenue des Ch.-Elysees:  April 7, 1852.

What a time seems to have passed since I wrote to you, my ever loved friend!  Again and again I have been on the point of writing, and something has stopped me always.  I have wished to wait till I had more about this and that to gossip of, and so the time went on.  Now I am getting impatient to have news of you, and to learn whether the lovely spring has brought you any good yet as to health and strength.  Don’t take vengeance on my silence, but write, write....

Yes, I want to see Beranger, and so does Robert.  George Sand we came to know a great deal more of.  I think Robert saw her six times.  Once he met her near the Tuileries, offered her his arm, and walked with her the whole length of the gardens.  She was not on that occasion looking as well as usual, being a little too much ‘endimanchee’ in terrestrial lavenders and supercelestial blues—­not, in fact, dressed with the remarkable taste which he has seen in her at other times.  Her usual costume is both pretty and quiet, and the fashionable waistcoat and jacket (which are a spectacle in all the ‘Ladies’ Companions’ of the day) make the only approach to masculine wearings to be observed in her.  She has great nicety and refinement in her personal ways, I think, and the cigarette is really a feminine weapon if properly understood.  Ah, but I didn’t see her smoke.  I was unfortunate.  I could only go with Robert three times to her house, and once she was out.  He was really very good and kind to let me go at all, after he found the sort of society rampant around her.  He didn’t like it extremely, but, being the prince of husbands, he was lenient to my desires and yielded the point.  She seems to live in the abomination of desolation, as far as regards society—­crowds of ill-bred men who adore her a genoux bas, betwixt a puff