Ver औषन्म-5झिङ । পঞ্চপঞ্চাশাৎ পত্ৰ । VERSAILLES, FRANCE, I2 Rue des Chantiers, Wednesday, 26th October, I864. MY DEAR GOUR, I have received your kind and welcome letter and would have replied to it earlier but for ill-health. You amuse me vastly, for the reports to which you allude are absolutely unfounded and evidently owe their birth to some busy brain highly poetical in its constitution My good friend, know that I am writing this letter to you, not from within the gloomy and frowning walls of a French prison, a modern 'Bastile' but from a room elegantly fitted up with all the comforts ( if not luxuries) of European civilization and so forth, and that I have done nothing in London of which even the most virtuous among my friends need be ashamed. The fellow, who has been concocting all these lies about me, reminds me of king Henry IV and I say to him, "Harry, the wish was father to the thought.' The scoundrel, no doubt, wishes me all sorts of misfortunes ; but I hope to disappoint him. I have too great a regard for myself to gratify his malignity. Can't afford, sir, to be charitable and generous in this affair I hope this will satisfy you, my lad, and other friends who take some interest in me. You are, no doubt, anxious to know why I am here in France. I will tell you. London is not half so pleasant a place to live in as this country and its brutal climate does not agree with Mrs. Dutt's health, though I
