that blows into the house all day is pleasant, and the evenings are charming.
For a wonder I am allowed a sheet of glazed paper, which tempts me to run off a letter, though there is no ship going for a week.
George and his household are all at Calcutta. He gave a dinner yesterday to General Allard, Runjeet Singh’s General, and Jacquemont’s friend, who came out again last week to join his master. He called on us the morning we left Calcutta, with all his staff and the officers of the French ship which brought him out, and we all tried to put our best French forward. Allard wears an immensely long beard, of which he makes two wings, that he is always stroking and making much of; and I was dead absent all the time he was there because his wings are beautiful white hair, and his moustachios, and the middle of his beard quite black. He looked like a piebald horse. Our party was not lively: nobody has three days’—
