sceptical as to your coming here at all....

What a beautiful Paris it is! I walked out a little yesterday with
Robert, and we both felt penetrated with the sentiment of southern life
as we watched men, women, and children sitting out in the sun, taking
wine and coffee, and enjoying their _fête_ day with good happy faces.
The mixture of classes is to me one of the most delicious features of
the South, and you have it here exactly as in Italy. The colouring too,
the brightness, even the sun--oh, come and enjoy it all with us. We have
had a most splendid spring beginning with February. Still, I have been
out very seldom, being afraid of treacherous winds combined with burning
sunshine, but I have enjoyed the weather in the house and by opening
the windows, and have been revived and strengthened much by it, and
shall soon recover my summer power of walking, I dare say. What do you
think I did the other night? Went to the Vaudeville to see the 'Dame aux
Camélias' on above the fiftieth night of the representation. I disagree
with the common outcry about its immorality. According to my view, it is
moral and human. But I never will go to see it again, for it almost
broke my heart and split my head. I had a headache afterwards for
twenty-four hours. Even Robert, who gives himself out for _blasé_ on
dramatic matters, couldn't keep the tears from rolling down his cheeks.
The exquisite acting, the too literal truth to nature everywhere, was
_exasperating_--there was something profane in such familiar handling of
life and death. Art has no business with real graveclothes when she
wants tragic drapery--has she? It was too much altogether like a bull
fight. There's a caricature at the shop windows of the effect produced,
the pit protecting itself with multitudinous umbrellas from the tears of
the boxes. This play is by Alexandre Dumas _fils_--and is worthy by its
talent of Alexandre Dumas _père_.