26 At the Paris Embassy [1889 



good wishes still. But Imperial Federation is not worth going to 

 prison for a second time nor even standing another contested election. 

 I have done enough — possibly too much — and am sick and weary of 

 the machinery of English public life. 



" On the other hand stands the world of art and poetry. In this 

 I can still hope to accomplish something, and with an advantage of 

 experience not every poet has. I have a great deal to accomplish be- 

 fore old age takes me and little time. My poems, my memoirs, my 

 book of maxims (the 'Wisdom of Merlyn),' my book of the Arab 

 horse. These are work enough for all my remaining strength. Then, 

 how delightful life is in perfect liberty! Never have I felt more cap- 

 able of enjoyment, of the pleasures of friendship, of the casual incidents 

 of romance, of the continuous happiness of life at home. These 

 harmonize with a literary, not with a political ambition, and so it is 

 best it should be. Am I not right ? " 



The three weeks that I spent at Paris on this occasion were delightful 

 ones passed all in this mood. I found Lytton at the Embassy, and our 

 old intimate intercourse was renewed. He, older than me by nine years, 

 was already entering that valley of the shadow of old age from which 

 he was never to emerge, and which ended in his death two years later. 

 It was that in which his last volume of verse was written, and he made 

 me the confidant of his sorrows, but this is not the place in which to 

 give them more publicity than the volume itself gave them when it 

 was published after his death. They served to accentuate my own 

 mood of aversion from public affairs, and I spent most of my time 

 with him at the Embassy, the same well-known house and garden where 

 I had spent so much of my early youth officially as a member of it in 

 the days of Lord Cowley and the Second Empire. I paid a visit, too, 

 to the Wagrams at Gros Bois, where I mixed again in French society. 

 The chateau was at that time undergoing repair of a substantia^ kind, 

 an experience it had not had since 1830, and my hosts were living in 

 the dependance, an interesting suite of little rooms once the abode of 

 Marshal Berthier's aides-de-camp, and possessed of a certain historic 

 charm, with their Empire furniture and decorations. We shot each 

 day in the great woods. 



" Gros Bois, Wagram tells me, has been an oak wood ever since 

 the time of the Druids. It was a royal domain, and had been given 

 over and over again to different favourites of the kings of France. 

 The last instance was when it was bestowed by Napoleon on the 

 Prince's grandfather, as the inscription over the door records, his 

 * companion in arms.' The estate is of about 4,000 hectares, of which 

 fully half are woodlands, 1,200 being inside the park wall, an ancient 

 enclosure dating from 1650. I never saw so completely isolated a 

 place, nor one quite so enjoyable. The woods are laid out formally 



