I would have written to you to-day, even if I had not received your
letter. You will forgive that what I have written should have been
scratched in the utmost haste to save the post. I can't even read it
over. There's the effect of going out to walk the first thing in the
morning....

Your ever affectionate
BA--to both of you.

* * * * *


_To Miss Mitford_

[Paris,] 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
Christmas Eve, [1851].

What can you have thought of me? That I was shot or deserved to be?
Forgive in the first instance, dearest friend, and believe that I won't
behave so any more, if in any way I can help it.

Tell me your thought now about L. Napoleon. He rode under our windows on
December 2 through an immense shout from the Carrousel to the Arc de
l'Etoile. There was the army and the sun of Austerlitz, and even I
thought it one of the grandest of sights; for he rode there in the name
of the people, after all....

But we know men most opposed to him, writers of the old 'Presse' and
'National,' and Orleanists, and Legitimists, and the fury of all such I