Your letter was a sweet greeting to us on our arrival here yesterday.
We had a millennial cabin on the deck of the Calais-Douvres, and floated over the strait as easily as the saints float upward to heaven (in the pictures). At Amiens we were very comfortably housed, and paid two enraptured visits, evening and morning, to the cathedral. I was delighted with J.'s delight in it. And we read our dear old cantos of the "Inferno" that we were reading a year ago, declining afterwards on "Eugénie Grandet." The nice woman who waited on us made herself very memorable to me by her sketch of her own life. She went to England when she was nineteen as a lady's maid--had been much _ennuyée de sa mère_, detested _les plaisirs_, liked only her regular every-day work and _la paix_.
Here we have a very fair _appartement_, and plenty of sunlight, _au premier_. Before dinner we walked up to the Arc de l'Étoile and back again, enjoying the lovely greenth and blossoms of the horse-chestnuts, which are in their first glory, innocent of dust or of one withered petal. This morning at twelve o'clock we are going to the Russian church, where J. has never been, and where I hope we shall hear the wonderful intoning and singing as I heard it years ago.
This is the chronicle of our happy married life, three days long--all its happiness conscious of a dear background in those who are loving us at Weybridge, at Thornhill, and at Ranby.
You are all inwoven into the pattern of my thoughts, which would have a sad lack without you. I like to go over again in imagination all the scene in the church and in the vestry, and to feel every loving look from the eyes of those who were rejoicing for us. Besides Professor Sellar's letter, which touched J. with grateful surprise, we have had one to him from Mr. Frederic Harrison, saying everything affectionate, and two very finely felt letters from Edith Simcox--one to him enclosing the one to me. Certainly, she has a rare generosity and elevation which find their easy channel in writing. My love to Henry and to the gentle Berthe,[42] who was an invisible presence at our wedding.
I think I must thank Florence, too, for her letter to J.; for we accept to the full the principle of "what is mine is thine" on each side. What most comforted him this morning was a letter from Albert Druce about the Chelsea house. His usual exclamation over anything from Albert is that his brother-in-law is the most satisfactory of men!