. . . “I did not intend to write till in answer to your first letter from France. But, now that it is so long in coming, I begin to fear that if I wait for that no letter will reach you during your stay at Paris. I have, however, little to communicate: everything thus far goes with a tolerable degree of tranquillity. On Friday, the day after you left me, I wrote to Shelley, and introduced in my letter the story I had learned from Hill at the Exhibition the Monday before, which had so much disturbed me. I wrote on Friday, because to a Friday’s letter I could have no answer till Monday, and therefore I calculated on two days’ repose. But my calculation was a bad one. I knew that Shelley’s temper was occasionally fiery, resentful, and indignant, and I passed this interval in no very enviable state. I thought perhaps I might have tried his temper too far. By the post-time on Monday my nerves were in a degree of flutter that I have very seldom experienced. But the letter came, and there was no harm: it was good-humoured. As to Hill’s story (I took care not to name my authority), he only said in a vague way that it was ‘much exaggerated, and that for the present explanation was superfluous.’”
