maniac since last Monday.

I will try my hand at that paper for H. W. to-morrow, if I can get a
yard of flooring to sit upon; but we have really been in that state of
topsy-turvyhood that even that has been an unattainable luxury, and may
yet be for eight-and-forty hours or so, for anything I see to the
contrary.

Ever faithfully.

[Sidenote: Mr. W. H. Wills.]

49, AVENUE DES CHAMPS ELYSEES, PARIS,
_Sunday Night, Oct. 21st, 1855._

MY DEAR WILLS,

Coming here from a walk this afternoon, I found your letter of yesterday
awaiting me. I send this reply by my brother Alfred, who is here, and
who returns home to-morrow. You should get it at the office early on
Tuesday.

I will go to work to-morrow, and will send you, please God, an article
by Tuesday's post, which you will get on Wednesday forenoon. Look
carefully to the proof, as I shall not have time to receive it for
correction. When you arrange about sending your parcels, will you
ascertain, and communicate to me, the prices of telegraph messages? It
will save me trouble, having no foreign servant (though French is in
that respect a trump), and may be useful on an emergency.

I have two floors here--_entresol_ and first--in a doll's house, but
really pretty within, and the view without astounding, as you will say
when you come. The house is on the Exposition side, about half a quarter
of a mile above Franconi's, of course on the other side of the way, and
close to the Jardin d'Hiver. Each room has but one window in it, but we
have no fewer than six rooms (besides the back ones) looking on the
Champs Elysees, with the wonderful life perpetually flowing up and down.
We have no spare-room, but excellent stowage for the whole family,
including a capital dressing-room for me, and a really slap-up kitchen
near the stairs. Damage for the whole, seven hundred francs a month.

But, sir--but--when Georgina, the servants, and I were here for the
first night (Catherine and the rest being at Boulogne), I heard Georgy
restless--turned out--asked: "What's the matter?" "Oh, it's dreadfully
dirty. I can't sleep for the smell of my room." Imagine all my
stage-managerial energies multiplied at daybreak by a thousand. Imagine
the porter, the porter's wife, the porter's wife's sister, a feeble
upholsterer of enormous age from round the corner, and all his workmen
(four boys