you must be careful of yourself, dearest; you MUST look after
yourself better; you MUST avoid all risks, lest you plunge your
friends into desolation and despair.

Dearest, you also express a wish to learn the details of my daily
life and surroundings. That wish I hasten to satisfy. Let me
begin at the beginning, since, by doing so, I shall explain
things more systematically. In the first place, on entering this
house, one passes into a very bare hall, and thence along a
passage to a mean staircase. The reception room, however, is
bright, clean, and spacious, and is lined with redwood and metal-
work. But the scullery you would not care to see; it is greasy,
dirty, and odoriferous, while the stairs are in rags, and the
walls so covered with filth that the hand sticks fast wherever it
touches them. Also, on each landing there is a medley of boxes,
chairs, and dilapidated wardrobes; while the windows have had
most of their panes shattered, and everywhere stand washtubs
filled with dirt, litter, eggshells, and fish-bladders. The smell
is abominable. In short, the house is not a nice one.

As to the disposition of the rooms, I have described it to you
already. True, they are convenient enough, yet every one of them
has an ATMOSPHERE. I do not mean that they smell badly so much as
that each of them seems to contain something which gives forth a
rank, sickly-sweet odour. At first the impression is an
unpleasant one, but a couple of minutes will suffice to dissipate
it, for the reason that EVERYTHING here smells--people's clothes,
hands, and everything else--and one grows accustomed to the
rankness. Canaries, however, soon die in this house. A naval
officer here has just bought his fifth. Birds cannot live long in