human race. I suspect, by the by, that she does not like me half so well
as I do her; it is my impression that she thinks me unamiable, or that
there is something or other not quite right about me. I am sorry if it
be so, because such a good, kindly, clear-sighted, and delicate person is
very apt to have reason at the bottom of her harsh thoughts, when, in
rare cases, she allows them to harbor with her.

To-day, and for some days past, we have been in quest of lodgings for
next winter; a weary search, up interminable staircases, which seduce us
upward to no successful result. It is very disheartening not to be able
to place the slightest reliance on the integrity of the people we are to
deal with; not to believe in any connection between their words and their
purposes; to know that they are certainly telling you falsehoods, while
you are not in a position to catch hold of the lie, and hold it up in
their faces.

This afternoon we called on Mr. and Mrs. ------ at the Hotel de l'Europe,
but found only the former at home. We had a pleasant visit, but I made
no observations of his character save such as I have already sufficiently
recorded; and when we had been with him a little while, Mrs. Chapman, the
artist's wife, Mr. Terry, and my friend, Mr. Thompson, came in. ------
received them all with the same good degree of cordiality that he did
ourselves, not cold, not very warm, not annoyed, not ecstatically
delighted; a man, I should suppose, not likely to have ardent individual
preferences, though perhaps capable of stern individual dislikes. But I
take him, at all events, to be a very upright man, and pursuing a narrow
track of integrity; he is a man whom I would never forgive (as I would a
thousand other men) for the slightest moral delinquency. I would not be
bound to say, however, that he has not the little sin of a fretful and
peevish habit; and yet perhaps I am a sinner myself for thinking so.