from both! P.S.--Do remember that this same love
requires just as delicate handling as a cobweb does: if a rough touch
break the cobweb, all the artists in the world can't mend it. There is a
truth for you. If you prevent his going to Paris now, he will go in six
months' time, and perhaps he will go without you. Perhaps he would be
happier at Lanciano than at Coombe, and he would have all his own
people; but he would want the _petits theatres_ all the same. You are
not wise, my poor pet; you should make him feel that you are one with
his pleasures, not, that you and his pleasures are enemies. But it is no
use to instil wisdom into you: you are very young, and very much in
love. You look on all the natural distractions which he inclines to as
so many rivals. So they may be; but _we don't beat our rivals by abusing
them_. The really wise way is to tacitly show that we can be more
attractive than they: if we cannot be so, we may sulk or sigh as we
will, we shall be vanquished by them. You will think me very
preachy-preachy, and perhaps you will throw me in the fire unread; but I
must say just this much more. Dear, you are in love with Love, but
underneath Love there is a real man, and real men are far from ideal
creatures. Now, it is the real man that you want to consider, to humor,
to study. If the real man be pleased, Love will take care of himself;
whereas, if you bore the real man, Love will fly away. If you had been
wise, my poor pet, I repeat, you would have found nothing so delightful
as Judic and Chaumont, and you would have declared that the asphalt
excelled all the Alps in the world. He does not love you the less
because he wants to be _dans le mouvement_, to hear what other men are
saying, and to smoke his cigar among his fellow-creatures.

* * * * *

_From, the Duchessa dell'Aquila Fulva, Hotel des Roches Noires,
Trouville, France, to the Principe di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset, Luton,
Bedfordshire, England._

Poor flower, in your box of wet moss, what has become of you? Are you
dead, and dried in your wife's _hortus siccus_? She would be quite sure
of you _then_, and I dare say much happier than if you were set forth in
anybody else's bouquet. I try in vain to imagine you in that "perfectly
proper" _milieu_ (is not that correct English, "perfectly proper"?).
Will you be dreadfully changed when one sees you again? There is a
French proverb which says that "the years of joy count d