weeks. I greet my dearest Malle with all my heart. May God give her, as
well as you, strength to bear and patiently submit.


TO HIS WIFE

BIARRITZ, August 4th, 1862.

I am afraid I have caused some confusion in our correspondence, as I
induced you to write too soon to places where I have not yet arrived. It
will be better for you to address your letters to Paris, just as though
I were there; the embassy then sends them after me, and I can more
quickly send word there if I alter my route. Yesterday evening I
returned from St. Sebastian to Bayonne, where I slept, and am now
sitting here in a corner-room of the Hotel de l'Europe, with charming
view on the blue sea, which drives its white foam through the curious
cliffs against the lighthouse. I have a bad conscience for seeing so
many beautiful things without you. If one could transport you here
through the air, I would go directly back again to St. Sebastian, and
take you with me. Fancy the Siebengebirge with the Drachenfels placed by
the sea; close by, Ehrenbreitstein, and between the two, pushing its
way into the land, an arm of the sea, somewhat broader than the Rhine,
and forming a round bay behind the mountains. In this you bathe in
transparently clear water, so heavy and so salt that you swim on the top
of it by yourself, and look through the broad gate of rocks into the
sea, or landward where the mountain chains top each other, always
higher, always bluer.

The women of the middle and lower classes are strikingly pretty,
occasionally beautiful; the men surly and uncivil; and the comforts of