I have very pleasant relations with all the J. B.’s here.  They are all friendly and well disposed to the North,—­I speak of the embassy, which, with the ambassador and —–­dress, numbers eight or ten souls, some of them very intellectual ones.  There are no other J. B.’s here.  I have no fear at present of foreign interference.  We have got three or four months to do our work in,—­a fair field and no favor.  There is no question whatever that the Southern commissioners have been thoroughly snubbed in London and Paris.  There is to be a blockade debate in Parliament next week, but no bad consequences are to be apprehended.  The Duke de Gramont (French ambassador, and an intimate friend of the Emperor) told my wife last night that it was entirely false that the Emperor had ever urged the English government to break the blockade.  “Don’t believe it,—­don’t believe a word of it,” he said.  He has always held that language to me.  He added that Prince Napoleon had just come out with a strong speech about us,—­you will see it, doubtless, before you get this letter,—­but it has not yet reached us.

Shall I say anything of Austria,—­what can I say that would interest you?  That’s the reason why I hate to write.  All my thoughts are in America.  Do you care to know about the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, that shall be King hereafter of Mexico (if L. N. has his way)?  He is next brother to the Emperor, but although I have had the honor of private audiences of many archdukes here, this one is a resident of Trieste.

He is about thirty,—­has an adventurous disposition,—­some imagination,—­a turn for poetry,—­has voyaged a good deal about the world in the Austrian ship-of-war,—­for in one respect he much resembles that unfortunate but anonymous ancestor of his, the King of Bohemia with the seven castles, who, according to Corporal Trim, had such a passion for navigation and sea-affairs, “with never a seaport in all his dominions.”  But now the present King of Bohemia has got the sway of Trieste, and is Lord High Admiral and Chief of the Marine Department.  He has been much in Spain, also in South America; I have read some travels, “Reise Skizzen,” of his—­printed, not published.  They are not without talent, and he ever and anon relieves his prose jog-trot by breaking into a canter of poetry.  He adores bull-fights, and rather regrets the Inquisition, and considers the Duke of Alva everything noble and chivalrous, and the most abused of men.  It would do your heart good to hear his invocations to that deeply injured shade, and his denunciations of the ignorant and vulgar protestants who have defamed him. (N.B.  Let me observe that the R. of the D. R. was not published until long after the “Reise Skizzen” were written.) ’Du armer Alva! weil du dem Willen deines Herrn