I can pardon you for discrediting it by your adulation of our despotism,
but I wish that you would not serve despotism more efficaciously by your
own faults, and by the comparisons which they suggest.
It seems also difficult to say what may not be the results of your long
intimacy with such a Government as ours, and of the contact of the two
armies. I doubt whether they will be useful to your aristocracy.
Remember me to Lord Lansdowne and to the Lewises, who added such pleasure
to our German tour.
Compiegne, February 15, 1855.
I conclude that this frightful weather is still keeping you in London, my
dear Senior. I am comforted by the fact that I myself shall not reach
Paris before the 28th.
I do not wish to act the part of the pedagogue in the fable who preaches
to people when his sermon can no longer be of any possible use, but I
cannot help telling you that it is a great imprudence on your part to
allow yourself to be caught in this way by the winter in England. What
you now suffer from is only a trifling malady, but it may become a real
illness if you persist in preferring pleasure to health. Pray think of
this in the future and do not tempt the devil.
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