If I were in Paris wouldn't I fly to where you were! It's so perfect of you even to think I'm there. I feel as though I was. Or at least that for two quite inferior pins I could pack up and go. But—chère—at the moment I can only walk from the kerridge to the door and from the door to the kerridge. Can't mount a stair—can't do anything, but lie in a chaise longue looking at mountains that make one feel one is living in the Eye of the Lord. It is all temporary—I am full of beans and full of fight—but unfortunately, darling, I'm full of bacilli too. Which is a bother. If you came here I'd simply have such a laugh about it that this rotten old chaise longue would break its Swiss legs. In stead, I'm waiting for Docteur Figli (good name, that!) and I've got a very nice booklet of information to give him about two little guineas that have just died for my sake. The number of guinea pigs, Anne, that I've murdered! So that, my precious dear, is page 103 that. Paris might be—might very well be, la pleine lune for me.

I left my dear little Isola Bella last week. The south of France is fever to the feverish. That's my experience. Adorable pays. I'll go back there one day but sans un thermomètre. Switzerland, which I've always managed to avoid, is the very devil. I knew it would be. I mean, the people are so Ugly; they are simply hideous. They have no shape. All the women have pear-shaped derrières, ugly heads, awful feet. All the men wear ready-made check flannelette suits, six sizes too small and felt hats another six sizes too small, with a little pre-war feather sticking up behind. Curse them. And the food. It's got no nerves. You know what I mean? It seems to lie down and wait for you; the very steaks are meek. There's no contact between you and it. You're not attracted. You don't feel that keenness to meet it and know more of it and get on very intimate terms. The asparagus is always stone dead. As to the purée de pommes de terre, you feel inclined to call it ‘uncle.’ Now I had food in the South that made me feel—should there be a Paradise—you and I shall have one lunch cooked by my old Marie which will atone for years of not meeting. And then, Anne, Switzerland is revoltingly clean. My bed—it's enough to unmake any man, the sight of it. Dead white—tucked in so tight that you have to insert yourself like a knife into an oyster. I got up the first night and almost whimpering, like Stepan in The Possessed, I put my old wild jackall skin over the counterpane. But this cleanliness persists in everything. Even the bird droppings on the terrasse are immaculate and every inch of lilac is crisp home from the laundry. It's a cursed country. And added to this there are these terrific mountains.

However, darling, I believe it is the only place where they do give one back one's wings. And I can't go on crawling any longer. It's beyond a joke.

I shan't stay here at this hotel long, so my London address is best. The sight of distant Montreux is altogether page 104 too powerful. As to the people in this hotel, it is like a living cemetery. I never saw such deaders. I mean belonging to a bygone period. Collar supports (do you remember them?) are the height of fashion here and hairnets and silver belt buckles and button boots. Face powder hasn't been invented yet.

It's a queer world, but in spite of everything, darling, it's a rare, rare joy to be alive and I salute you—and it—and kiss you both together—but you I kiss more warmly.