The dotation of the President is enormous certainly, and I wish for his own sake it had been rather more moderate.  Now I must end here.  Post hour strikes.  God bless you.

Do love me as much as you can, always, and think how I am your ever affectionate

BA.

Our darling is well; thank God.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Jameson

[Paris]:  138 Avenue des Ch.-Elysees:  April 12, Monday, 1852.

Your letter was pleasant and not so pleasant, dearest Monna Nina; for it was not so pleasant indeed to hear how ill you had been—­and yet to be lifted into the hope, or rather certainty, of seeing you next week pleased us extremely of course, and the more that your note through Lady Lyell had thrown us backward into a slough of despond and made me sceptical as to your coming here at all....

What a beautiful Paris it is!  I walked out a little yesterday with Robert, and we both felt penetrated with the sentiment of southern life as we watched men, women, and children sitting out in the sun, taking wine and coffee, and enjoying their fete day with good happy faces.  The mixture of classes is to me one of the most delicious features of the South, and you have it here exactly as in Italy.  The colouring too, the brightness, even the sun—­oh, come and enjoy it all with us.  We have had a most splendid spring beginning with February.  Still, I have been out very seldom, being afraid of treacherous winds combined with burning sunshine, but I have enjoyed the weather in the house and by opening the windows, and have been revived and strengthened much by it, and shall soon recover my summer power of walking, I dare say.  What do you think I did the other night?  Went to the Vaudeville to see the ’Dame aux Camelias’ on above the fiftieth night of the representation.  I disagree with the common outcry about its immorality.  According to my view, it is moral and human.  But I never will go to see it again, for it almost broke my heart and split my head.  I had a headache afterwards for twenty-four hours.  Even Robert, who gives himself out for blase on dramatic matters, couldn’t keep the tears from rolling down his cheeks.  The exquisite acting, the too literal truth to nature everywhere, was exasperating—­there was something profane in such familiar handling of life and death.  Art has no business with real graveclothes when she wants tragic drapery—­has she?  It was too much altogether like a bull fight.  There’s a caricature at the shop windows of the effect produced, the pit protecting itself with multitudinous umbrellas from the tears of the boxes.  This play is by Alexandre Dumas fils—­and is worthy by its talent of Alexandre Dumas pere.

Only that once have I been in a Parisian theatre.  I couldn’t go even to see ‘Les Vacances de Pandolphe’ when George Sand had the goodness to send us tickets for the first night.  She failed in it, I am sorry to say—­it did not ‘draw,’ as the phrase is.  Now she has left Paris, but is likely to return.