Letter from the Duchesse de Brissac, France, to Baroness Marie Blaze de Bury, 18-- : autograph manuscript signed.

Thanking her for news of Madame de Mouny and for sending her a package of books. Even if they're not all masterpieces, she will derive something from reading them. She is building an apiary and compares the intellectual honey of the books to the honey of her bees. If it weren't for the children, she and her husband would have no interest in leaving the countryside to return to smelly Paris. She hopes that Rose will be able to put off her trip to Lanobre. Paris will soon fill up with interesting people who will want to see Rose, among them Lord Brougham, who will want her to stay for a while. She says that this strange coming together will cause all kinds of rumors until the truth is revealed. She talks about a superb article by Montalembert and about some kind of election. She is appalled [apparently in relation to the election] by the attitude of the Church, which allowed itself to be deceived by offers that would in fact be advantageous to it. She goes on to give some friendly advice about Yetta, who must be a young lady now. She feels that Rose should warn her about precociousness and the dangers of an overactive imagination and says that it's dangerous to be the emulator or even the rival of one's mother when one should just be her daughter. She asks Rose if she has the courage to talk to Yetta about these matters and observes that people generally want their children to be different from them and imagine that the only psychological pain is the pain that one hasn't been able to avoid oneself.