d
she powders it with gold dust for effect; but there is less physical
and more intellectual beauty than is generally attributed to her.
She is a woman of very decided opinions. I like all that, don't you?
and I like her letter to the press, as everybody must." Besides
this, I have to-day a letter from a friend in Paris, who says that
"everybody feels her charm," and that "the Emperor, when presenting
her at the balcony on the wedding-day, looked radiant with
happiness." My Parisian friend says that young Alexandre Dumas is
amongst the people arrested for libel,--a thorough _mauvais sujet_.
Lamartine is quite ruined, and forced to sell his estates. He was
always, I believe, expensive, like all those French _litterateurs_.
You don't happen to have in Boston--have you?--a copy of "Les
Memoires de Lally Tollendal"? I think they are different
publications in defence of his father, published, some in London
during the Emigration, some in Paris after the Restoration. What I
want is an account of the retreat from Pondicherie. I'll tell you
why some day here. Mrs. Browning is most curious about your
rappings,--of which I suppose you believe as much as I do of the
Cock Lane Ghost, whose doings, by the way, they much resemble.

I liked Mrs. Tyler's letter; at least I liked it much better than
the one to which it was an answer, although I hold it one of our
best female privileges to have no act or part in such matters.

Now you will be sorry to have a very bad account of me. Three weeks
ago frost and snow set in here, and ever since I have been unable to
rise or stand, or put one foot before another, and the pain is much
worse than at first. I suppose rheumatism has supervened upon the
injured nerve. God bless you. Love to all.

Ever faithfully yours, M.R.M.

Swallowfield, March 17, 1853

My Dear Friend: I cannot enough thank you for your most kind and
charming letter. Your letters, and the thoughts of you, and the hope
that you will coax your partners into the hazardous experiment of
letting you come to England, help to console me under this long
confinement; for here I am at near Easter still a close prisoner
from the consequences of the accident that took place before
Christmas. I have only once left my room, and that only to the
opposite chamber to have this cleaned, and I got