You seem to have had a sort of inkling about my brittleness when you were here.  It was the beginning of a bad attack of cough and pain in the side, the consequence of which was that I turned suddenly into the likeness of a ghost and frightened Robert from his design of going to England.  About that I am by no means regretful; he was not wanted, as the event proved abundantly.  The worst was that he was annoyed by the number of judicious observers and miserable comforters who told him I was horribly changed and ought to be taken back to Italy forthwith.  I knew it was nothing but an accidental attack, and that the results would pass away, as they did.  I kept quiet, applied mustard poultices, and am now looking again (tell dear Mr. Martin) ‘as if I had shammed.’  So all these misfortunes are strictly historical, you are to understand.  To-night we are going to Ary Scheffer’s to hear music and to see ever so many celebrities.  Oh, and let me remember to tell you that M. Thierry, the blind historian, has sent us a message by his physician to ask us to go to see him, and as a matter of course we go.  Madame Viardot, the prima donna, and Leonard, the first violin player at the Conservatoire, are to be at M. Scheffer’s.

After all, you are too right.  The less amused I am, clearly the better for me.  I should live ever so many years more by being shut up in a hermitage, if it were warm and dry.  More’s the pity, when one wants to see and hear as I do.  The only sort of excitement and fatigue which does me no harm, but good, is travelling.  The effect of the continual change of air is to pour in oil as the lamp burns; so I explain the extraordinary manner in which I bear the fatigue of being four-and-twenty hours together in a diligence, for instance, which many strong women would feel too much for them.

All this talking of myself when I want to talk of you and to tell you how touched I was by the praises of your winning little Letitia!  Enclosed is a note to Chapman & Hall which will put her ‘bearer’ (if she can find one in London) in possession of the two volumes in question.  I shall like her to have them, and she must try to find my love, as the King of France did the poison (a ‘most unsavoury simile,’ certainly), between the leaves.  I send with them, in any case, my best love.  Ah, so sorry I am that she has suffered from the weather you have had.  She is a most interesting child, and of a nature which is rare....

Robert’s warm regards, with those of your

Ever affectionate and grateful
BA.

Madame Viardot is George Sand’s heroine Consuelo.  You know that beautiful book.

* * * * *

With the last days of June the long stay in Paris came to an end, and the Brownings paid their second visit to London.  Their residence on this occasion was at 58 Welbeck Street (’very respectable rooms this time, and at a moderate price’), and here they stayed until the beginning of November.  Neither husband nor wife seems to have written much poetry during this year, either in Paris or in London.