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I have packed and sent by EXPRESS a good proof of Couture's picture, signed by the engraver, my poor friend, Manceau. It is the best that I have and I have only just found it. I have sent with it a photograph of a drawing by Marchal which was also like me; but one changes from year to year.

But such impressions were superficial. Her portrait in black and white by Couture, engraved by Manceau, seems to reconcile these apparent discrepancies. Beauty is not here, but the face is so powerful and comprehensive that we perceive there at once the mirror of a mind capable of embracing both the prose and the poetry of life; and by many this portrait is preferred to the earlier likenesses.

In short, I have nothing to tell you about myself which is very interesting. When one has the patience of an ox and the wrist broken from crushing stones well or badly, one has scarcely any unexpected events or emotions to recount. My poor Manceau called me the ROAD- MENDER, and there is nothing less poetic than those beings.

A 'trompeur trompeur et demi' is prettily said; and, if you please, you may call 'Varon, un Normand', and 'Sostrate, un Manceau, qui vaut un Normand et demi'; and, considering the 'denouement' in the light of trick upon trick, it would undoubtedly be below the dignity of the buskin, and fitter for the sock. But let us see if we cannot bring off the author.

A 'trompeur trompeur et demi' is prettily said; and, if you please, you may call 'Varon, un Normand', and 'Sostrate, un Manceau, qui vaut un Normand et demi'; and, considering the 'denouement' in the light of trick upon trick, it would undoubtedly be below the dignity of the buskin, and fitter for the sock. But let us see if we cannot bring off the author.

Such a man could not exist in a French community, where, at the very height of hostilities, so prominent a military authority as Colonel Émile Manceau could pause to say, "Let us read, let us give much time to reading!"