[Paris] 3 Rue du Colisee, Avenue des Champs-Elysees:
Saturday, December 17, 1855 [postmark].

How pleasant, dearest Mona Nina, to hear you, though the voice sounds
far! Try and come back to us soon, and let us talk, or listen, rather,
to your talking. Why shouldn't _I_, too, have a sister of charity, like
others? I appeal to you.

Still, I have only good to tell you of myself. I am better through the
better weather and through our arrival in this apartment, where, as
Robert says, we are as pleased as if we had never lived in a house
before. Well, I assure you the rooms are perfect in comfort and
convenience; not large, but _warm_, and of a number and arrangement
which exclude all fault-finding. Clean, carpeted; no glitter, nothing
very pretty--not even the clocks--but with sofas and chairs suited to
lollers such as one of us, and altogether what I mean whenever I say
that an 'apartment' on the Continent is twenty times more really
'comfortable' than any of your small houses in England. Robert has a
room to himself too. It's perfect. I hop about from one side to the
other, like a bird in a new cage. The feathers are draggled and rough,
though. I am not strong, though the cough is quieter without the least
doubt.

And this time also I shall not die, perhaps. Indeed, I do think not.

That darling Robert carried me into the carriage, swathed past possible
breathing, over face and respirator in woollen shawls. No, he wouldn't
set me down even to walk up the fiacre steps, but shoved me in upside
down, in a struggling bundle--I struggling for breath--he accounting to
the concierge for 'his murdered man' (rather woman) in a way which threw
me into fits of laughter afterwards to remember. 'Elle se porte tres
bien! elle se porte extremement bien. Ce n'est rien que les poumons.'
Nothing but lungs! No air in them, which was the worst! Think how the
concierge must have wondered ever since about 'cet original d'Anglais,'
and the peculiar way of treating wives when they are in excellent
health. 'Sacre.'

Kind Madame Mohl was here to-day, asking about you; and the Aides, male
and female, whom we did not see, being at dinner; and dear Lady Elgin
came to the door in her wheel-chair.

We keep Penini (in a bed this time) in our bedroom. He was so pathetic
about it, we would not lose him.

Write to us, keep writing to us, till you come. I think much of you,
wish much for you, and feel much _with_ you. May God bless you, my dear
dear friend! The frost broke up on Thursday, and it is raining warmly
to-day; but I can't believe in the possibility of the cold penetrating
much into this house under worse circumstances; and I shall be bold, and
try hard to begin writing next week.

Oh! George Sand. How magnificent that eighteenth volume is; I mean the
volume which concludes with the views upon the _sexes_! After all, and
through all, if her hands are ever so defiled, that woman has a clean
soul.

On the magnetic subjects, too, her 'je ne sais' is worthy of her. And
yet, more is to be known I am sure, than she knows.

I read this book so eagerly and earnestly that I seem to burn it up
before me. Really there are great things in it.

And to hear people talking it over coldly, pulling it leaf from leaf!

Robert quite joins with me at last. He is intensely interested, and full
of admiration.

Now do write. With our united love, we are ever yours, be certain!

R.B. and E.B.B.

Remember not to agree to do the etching. Pray be careful not to involve
the precious eyes too much. How easy it would be to etch them out!
Frightfully easy.