University of Virginia Library

3. III.

Your letter, dear Ned, was a godsend. Fancy
what a fix I am in, — I, who never had a day's
sickness since I was born. My left leg weighs
three tons. It is embalmed in spices and smothered
in layers of fine linen, like a mummy. I
can't move. I have n't moved for five thousand
years. I'm of the time of Pharaoh.

I lie from morning till night on a lounge, staring
into the hot street. Everybody is out of
town enjoying himself. The brown-stone-front
houses across the street resemble a row of particularly
ugly coffins set up on end. A green
mould is settling on the names of the deceased,
carved on the silver door-plates. Sardonic spiders
have sewed up the key-holes. All is silence
and dust and desolation. — I interrupt this a
moment, to take a shy at Watkins with the
second volume of César Birotteau. Missed him!

I think I could bring him down with a copy of
Sainte-Beuve or the Dictionnaire Universel, if I
had it. These small Balzac books somehow
don't quite fit my hand; but I shall fetch him
yet. I've an idea Watkins is tapping the old
gentleman's Château Yquem. Duplicate key of
the wine-cellar. Hibernian swarries in the front
basement. Young Cheops up stairs, snug in his
cerements. Watkins glides into my chamber,
with that colorless, hypocritical face of his
drawn out long like an accordion; but I know
he grins all the way down stairs, and is glad I
have broken my leg. Was not my evil star in
the very zenith when I ran up to town to attend
that dinner at Delmonico's? I did n't come up
altogether for that. It was partly to buy Frank
Livingstone's roan mare Margot. And now I
shall not be able to sit in the saddle these two
months. I'll send the mare down to you at The
Pines, — is that the name of the place?

Old Dillon faneies that I have something on
my mind. He drives me wild with lemons.
Lemons for a mind diseased! Nonsense. I am only as restless as the devil under this confinement,
— a thing I'm not used to. Take a

man who has never had so much as a headache
or a toothache in his life, strap one of his legs in
a section of water-spout, keep him in a room in
the city for weeks, with the hot weather turned
on, and then expect him to smile and purr and
be happy! It is preposterous. I can't be cheerful
or calm.

Your letter is the first consoling thing I have
had since my disaster, ten days ago. It really
cheered me up for half an hour. Send me a
screed, Ned, as often as you can, if you love me.
Anything will do. Write me more about that
little girl in the hammock. That was very
pretty, all that about the Dresden china shepherdess
and the pond-lily; the imagery a little
mixed, perhaps, but very pretty. I did n't suppose
you had so much sentimental furniture in
your upper story. It shows how one may be
familiar for years with the reception-room of his
neighbor, and never suspect what is directly under
his mansard. I supposed your loft stuffed
with dry legal parchments, mortgages and affidavits;
you take down a package of manuscript,
and lo! there are lyrics and sonnets and canzonettas.
You really have a graphic descriptive

touch, Edward Delaney, and I suspect you of
anonymous love-tales in the magazines.

I shall be a bear until I hear from you again.
Tell me all about your pretty inconnue across the
road. What is her name? Who is she? Who's
her father? Where's her mother? Who's her
lover? You cannot imagine how this will occupy
me. The more trifling the better. My
imprisonment has weakened me intellectually
to such a degree that I find your epistolary gifts
quite considerable. I am passing into my second
childhood. In a week or two I shall take to
India-rubber rings and prongs of coral. A silver
cup, with an appropriate inscription, would be a
delicate attention on your part. In the mean
time, write!