is is the first fire
we have had occasion for. It was colder this morning, but we have had
exquisite weather, really, ever since we left England.

The 'elf' is flourishing in all good fairyhood, with a scarlet rose leaf
on each cheek. Wilson says she never knew him to have such an
irreproachable appetite. He is charmed with Paris, and its magnificent
Punches, and roundabouts, and balloons--which last he says, looking up
after them gravely, 'go to God.' The child has curious ideas about
theology already. He is of opinion that God 'lives among the birds.' He
has taken to calling himself '_Peninni_,'[3] which sounds something like
a fairy's name, though he means it for 'Wiedeman.'

Robert is in good spirits, and inclined to like Paris increasingly. Do
you know I think you have an idea in England that you monopolise
comforts, and I, for one, can't admit it. These snug 'apartments'
exclude the draughty passages and staircases, which threaten your life
every time that you run to your bedroom for a pocket-handkerchief in
England. I much prefer the Continental houses to the English ones, both
for winter and summer, on this account.

So glad I am that you are nearly at the end of your work. To rest after
work, what more than rest that always is!

Write to us often--do! We are not in Italy, and you have no excuse for
even _seeming_ to forget us. We are full in sight still, remember.

Are you aware that Carlyle travelled with us to Paris? He left a deep
impression with me. It is difficult to conceive of a more interesting
human soul, I think. All the bitterness is love with the point reversed.
He seems to me to have a profound sensibility--so profound and turbulent
that it unsettles his general sympathies. Do you guess what I mean the
least in the world? or is it as dark as my writings are of course?

I hope on every account you will have no increase of domestic care. How
is Miss Procter? How kind everybody was to us in England, and how
affectionately we remember it! God bless you yourself! We love you for
the past and the present, besides the future in December.

Your attached
E.B.B.

* * * * *

_To Miss Mitford_

[Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysees:
October 22, [1851].

The pause in writing has come from the confusion in living, my ever
dearest Miss Mitford, and no worse cause. It was a long while before we
could settle ourselves in a private apartment, and we had to stay at the