For myself, I have felt and still feel quite safe. My rooms are in the airiest quarter of Paris, facing the gardens of the Tuileries, with windows overlooking the king's; and, as far as _air_ is concerned, if his majesty considers himself well situated, it would be quite ridiculous in so insignificant a person as myself to be alarmed. With absolute health, confident spirits, and tolerably regular habits, I have usually thought one may defy almost anything but love or a bullet. To-day, however, there have been, they say, two cases _within the palace-walls_, members of the royal household, and Casimir Perier, who probably lives well and has enough to occupy his mind, is very low with it, and one cannot help feeling that he has no certain exemption, when a disease has touched both above and below him. I went to-day to the Messagerie to engage my place for Marseilles, on the way to Italy, but the seats are all taken, in both mail-post and diligence, for a fortnight to come, and, as there are no _extras_ in France, one must wait his turn. Having done my duty to myself by the inquiry, I shall be content to remain quiet.
I have just returned from a social tea-party at a house of one of the few English families left in Paris. It is but a little after ten, and the streets, as I came along, were as deserted and still as if it were a city of the dead. Usually, until four or five in the morning, the same streets are thronged with carriages hurrying to and fro, and always till midnight the _trottoirs_ are crowded with promenaders. To-night I scarce met a foot-passenger, and but one solitary cabriolet in a walk of a mile. The contrast was really impressive. The moon was nearly full, and high in the heavens, and the sky absolutely without a trace of a cloud; nothing interrupted the full broad light of the moon, and the empty streets were almost as bright as at noon-day; and, as I crossed the _Place Vendome_, I could hear, for the first time since I have been in Paris, though I have passed it at every hour of the night, the echo of my footsteps reverberated from the walls around. You should have been in these crowded cities of Europe to realize the impressive solemnity of such solitude.