How are you—­may I hope to hear soon?

I don’t know exactly what possessed me to set my next day so far off as Saturday—­as it was said, however, so let it be.  And I will bring the rest of the ’Duchess’—­four or five hundred lines,—­’heu, herba mala crescit’—­(as I once saw mournfully pencilled on a white wall at Asolo)—­but will you tell me if you quite remember the main of the first part—­(parts there are none except in the necessary process of chopping up to suit the limits of a magazine—­and I gave them as much as I could transcribe at a sudden warning)—­because, if you please, I can bring the whole, of course.

After seeing you, that Saturday, I was caught up by a friend and carried to see Vidocq—­who did the honours of his museum of knives and nails and hooks that have helped great murderers to their purposes—­he scarcely admits, I observe, an implement with only one attestation to its efficacy; but the one or two exceptions rather justify his latitude in their favour—­thus one little sort of dessert knife did only take one life....  ‘But then,’ says Vidocq, ’it was the man’s own mother’s life, with fifty-two blows, and all for’ (I think) ‘fifteen francs she had got?’ So prattles good-naturedly Vidocq—­one of his best stories of that Lacenaire—­’jeune homme d’un caractere fort avenant—­mais c’etait un poete,’ quoth he, turning sharp on me out of two or three other people round him.

Here your letter breaks in, and sunshine too.

Why do you send me that book—­not let me take it?  What trouble for nothing!

An old French friend of mine, a dear foolish, very French heart and soul, is coming presently—­his poor brains are whirling with mesmerism in which he believes, as in all other unbelief.  He and I are to dine alone (I have not seen him these two years)—­and I shall never be able to keep from driving the great wedge right through his breast and descending lower, from riveting his two foolish legs to the wintry chasm; for I that stammer and answer hap-hazard with you, get proportionately valiant and voluble with a mere cupful of Diderot’s rinsings, and a man into the bargain.

If you were prevented from leaving the house yesterday, assuredly to-day you will never attempt such a thing—­the wind, rain—­all is against it:  I trust you will not make the first experiment except under really favourable auspices ... for by its success you will naturally be induced to go on or leave off—­Still you are better!  I fully believe, dare to believe, that will continue.  As for me, since you ask—­find me but something to do, and see if I shall not be well!—­Though I am well now almost.

How good you are to my roses—­they are not of my making, to be sure.  Never, by the way, did Miss Martineau work such a miracle as I now witness in the garden—­I gathered at Rome, close to the fountain of Egeria, a handful of fennel-seeds from the most indisputable plant of fennel I ever chanced upon—­and, lo, they are come up ... hemlock, or something akin!  In two places, moreover.  Wherein does hemlock resemble fennel?  How could I mistake?  No wonder that a stone’s cast off from that Egeria’s fountain is the Temple of the God Ridiculus.