[Paris—Saturday, 12 November 1859]
Saturday 12th The letter for Lissie to make the winter passage and join us goes today. We have been very busy this week writing up to the last moment. I do hope she will come. Rose very early in order to go to Fontainebleau. The day was cold but delightfully sunny and we had a nice run there. What a sad deserted old place it is, telling gloomy tales of old magnificence which all Louis Phillippe’s money could not re-animate. Dead, dead, yet the sighs of the imperial guard still echoes in le cour des adieux, or it may be this bleak November wind. I don’t wonder that Louis goes to Compiègne with his gay Eugénie instead of Fontainebleau. The fancies must be many that play about the pillows of the great state-bed for there just above hangs still the cipher of the slain queen, [here appears the monogram of “VM”]. Royalty suffers much and we were told the imperial family endured even this for 30 days.
