The season is getting so late mama thinks we ought to leave London,
especially as Garcia is taking his vacation, and we are going in a few
days to Paris.

Garcia has given us a letter to his sister, Madame Viardot (of whom he
said she had brains but no voice). He wrote: "I send you my pupil. Do all
you can to persuade her to go on the stage. She has it in her."

But Madame Viardot may "do all she can"; I will never go on the stage.

If "it" is in me, it must work out some other way.


PARIS, _May, 1861._

DEAR A.,--Mother will have written to you of my engagement to Charles
Moulton. I wish you would come and see me married, and that I could
present all my future family to the most lovable of aunts.

I think I shall have everything to make me happy. In the first place, my
fiance is very musical, composes charming things, and plays delightfully
on the piano; my future mother-in-law is a dear old lady, musical and
universally talented; my future father-in-law is a _bona-fide_ American, a
dear quixotic old gentleman who speaks the most awful French. Although he
has lived in Paris for forty years, he has never conquered the
pronunciation of the French language, but has invented a unique dialect of
his own. Every word that can be pronounced in English he pronounces in
English, as well as all numbers. For instance, a phrase such as _La
guerre de mille huit cent quinze etait une demonstration de la liberte