and you would have liked her, I am sure, for her warm heart and her many accomplishments.  I had a sure way to Beranger, one of my dear friends being a dear friend of his; but on inquiring for him last week, that friend also is gone to heaven.  Do pick up for me all you can about Louis Napoleon, my one real abiding enthusiasm,—­the enthusiasm of my whole life,—­for it began with the Emperor and has passed quite undiminished to the present great, bold, and able ruler of France.  Mrs. Browning shares it, I think; only she calls herself cool, which I don’t; and another still more remarkable co-religionist in the L.N. faith is old Lady Shirley (of Alderley), the writer of that most interesting letter to Gibbon, dated 1792, published by her father, Lord Sheffield, in his edition of the great historian’s posthumous works.  She is eighty-two now, and as active and vigorous in body and mind, as sixty years ago.

    Make my most affectionate love to my friend in the Avenue des Champs
    Elysees, and believe me ever, my dear Mr. Fields, most gratefully
    and affectionately yours,

    M.R.M.

    (No date)

Ah, my dearest Mr. Fields, how inimitably good and kind you are to me!  Your account of Rachel is most delightful, the rather that it confirms a preconceived notion which two of my friends had taken pains to change.  Henry Chorley, not only by his own opinion, but by that of Scribe, who told him that there was no comparison between her and Viardot.  Now if Viardot, even in that one famous part of Fides, excels Rachel, she must be much the finer actress, having the horrible drawback of the music to get over.  My other friend told me a story of her, in the modern play of Virginie; she declared that when in her father’s arms she pointed to the butcher’s knife, telling him what to do, and completely reversing that loveliest story; but I hold to your version of her genius, even admitting that she did commit the Virginie iniquity, which would be intensely characteristic of her calling,—­all actors and actresses having a desire to play the whole play themselves, speaking every speech, producing every effect in their own person.  No doubt she is a great actress, and still more assuredly is Louis Napoleon a great man, a man of genius, which includes in my mind both sensibility and charm.  There are little bits of his writing from Ham, one where he speaks of “le repos de ma prison,” another long and most eloquent passage on exile, which ends (I forget the exact words) with a sentiment full of truth and sensibility.  He is speaking of the treatment shown to an exile in a foreign land, of the mistiness and coldness of some, of the blandness and smoothness of others, and he goes on to say, “He must be a man of ten thousand who behaves to an exile just as he would behave to another person.”  If I could trust you to perform a commission for me, and let me pay you the money you spent upon it, I would ask you