morning, and to find your letter there. We have agreed to drop Sicily,
and to return home by way of Marseilles. Our projected time for reaching
London is the 10th of December.

As this house is full, I daresay we shall meet some one we know at the
table d'hote to-day. It is extraordinary that the only travellers we
have encountered, since we left Paris, have been one horribly vapid
Englishman and wife whom we dropped at Basle, one boring Englishman whom
we found (and, thank God, left) at Geneva, and two English maiden
ladies, whom we found sitting on a rock (with parasols) the day before
yesterday, in the most magnificent part of the Gorge of Gondo, the most
awful portion of the Simplon--there awaiting their travelling chariot,
in which, with their money, their parasols, and a perfect shop of
baskets, they were carefully _locked up_ by an English servant in sky
blue and silver buttons. We have been in the most extraordinary
vehicles--like swings, like boats, like Noah's arks, like barges and
enormous bedsteads. After dark last night, a landlord, where we changed
horses, discovered that the luggage would certainly be stolen from
_questo porco d'uno carro_--this pig of a cart--his complimentary
description of our carriage, unless cords were attached to each of the
trunks, which cords were to hang down so that we might hold them in our
hands all the way, and feel any tug that might be made at our treasures.
You will imagine the absurdity of our jolting along some twenty miles in
this way, exactly as if we were in three shower-baths and were afraid to
pull the string.

We are going to the Scala to-night, having got the old box belonging to
the hotel, the old key of which is lying beside me on the table. There
seem to be no singers of note here now, and it appears for the time to
have fallen off considerably. I shall now bring this to a close, hoping
that I may have more interesting jottings to send you about the old
scenes and people, from Genoa, where we shall stay two days. You are
now, I take it, at Macready's. I shall be greatly interested by your
account of your visit there. We often talk of you all.

Edward's Italian is (I fear) very weak. When we began to get really into
the language, he reminded me of poor Roche in Germany. But he seems to
have picked up a little this morning. He has been unfortunate with the
unlucky Egg, leaving a pair of his shoes (his favourite shoes) behind in
Paris, and his flannel dressing