[Paris], 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysees:
February 26, [1852].

Never believe of me so bad a thing as that I could have received from
you, my ever dear and very dear friend, such a letter as you describe,
and rung hollow in return. I did not get your letter, so how could I
send an answer? Your letter's lost, like some other happy things. But I
thank you for it fervently, guessing from what you say the sympathy and
affection of it. I thank you for it most gratefully.

As for poor dear Miss Mitford's book, I was entirely upset by the
biography she thought it necessary or expedient to give of me. Oh, if
our friends would but put off anatomising one till after one was safely
dead, and call to mind that, previously, we have nerves to be agonised
and morbid brains to be driven mad! I am morbid, I know. I can't bear
some words even from Robert. Like the lady who lay in the grave, and was
ever after of the colour of a shroud, so I am white-souled, the past has
left its mark with me for ever. And now (this is the worst) every
newspaper critic who talks of my poems may refer to other things. I
shall not feel myself safe a moment from references which stab like a
knife.

But poor dear Miss Mitford, if we don't forgive what's meant as
kindness, how are we to forgive what's meant as injury? In my first
agitation I felt it as a real vexation that I couldn't be angry with
her. How could I, poor thing? She has always loved me, and been so
anxious to please me, and this time she seriously thought that Robert
and I would be delighted. Extraordinary defect of comprehension!

Still, I did not, I could not, conceal from her that she had given me
great pain, and she replied in a tone which really made me almost feel
ungrateful for being pained, she said 'rather that her whole book had
perished than have given me a moment's pain.' How are you to feel after
_that_?

For the rest, it appears that she had merely come forward to the rescue
of my reputation, no more than so. Sundry romantic tales had been in
circulation about me. I was 'in widow's weeds' in my habitual
costume--and, in fact, before I was married I had grievously scandalised
the English public (the imaginative part of the public), and it was
expedient to 'tirer de l'autre cote.'

Well, I might have laughed at _that_--but I didn't. I wrote a very
affectionate letter, for I really love Miss Mitford, though she
understands me no more under certain respects than you in England
understand Louis Napoleon and the French nation. Love's love. She meant
the best to me--and so, do you, who have a much more penetrating sense
of delicacy, forgive her for my sake, dear friend....

Of the memoirs of Madame Ossoli, I know only the extracts in the
'Athenaeum.' She was a most interesting woman to me, though I did not
sympathise with a large portion of her opinions. Her written works are
just _naught_. She said herself they were sketches, thrown out in haste
and for the means of subsistence, and that the sole production of hers
which was likely to represent her at all would be the history of the
Italian Revolution. In fact, her reputation, such as it was in America,
seemed to stand mainly on her conversation and oral lectures. If I
wished anyone to do her justice, I should say, as I have indeed said,
'Never read what she has written.' The letters, however, are individual,
and full, I should fancy, of that magnetic personal influence which was
so strong in her. I felt drawn in towards her, during our short
intercourse; I loved her, and the circumstances of her death shook me to
the very roots of my heart. The comfort is, that she lost little in this
world--the change could not be loss to her. She had suffered, and was
likely to suffer still more.

And now, am I to tell you that I have seen George Sand twice, and am to
see her again? Ah, there is no time to tell you, for I must shut up this
letter. She sate, like a priestess, the other morning in a circle of
eight or nine men, giving no oracles, except with her splendid eyes,
sitting at the corner of the fire, and warming her feet quietly, in a
general silence of the most profound deference. There was something in
the calm disdain of it which pleased me, and struck me as
characteristic. She was George Sand, that was enough: you wanted no
proof of it. Robert observed that 'if any other mistress of a house had
behaved so, he would have walked out of the room'--but, as it was, no
sort of incivility was meant. In fact, we hear that she 'likes us very
much,' and as we went away she called me 'chere Madame' and kissed me,
and desired to see us both again.

I did not read myself the passage in question from Miss M.'s book. I
couldn't make up my mind, my courage, to look at it. But I understood
from Robert.