and fruits of Cuba, and it would be very agreeable, if greater and dearer vocations did not prevent me!
Many kinds of trees are blossoming now that the rainy season is at hand. Cuculios come out in great numbers, and constitute here, as at L'Industrie, my amusement and my torment. Madame C. cannot, she declares, say sufficient about the splendour and the luxuriance of the vegetation during the rainy season, nor of the pomp and gorgeous colouring of the clouds. She would willingly tempt me to remain and see all this—with her!
We are now alone here, she, her youngest son, the young giant-like Sidney S., and three of the second son's children, namely, my little Cabellero Adolpho; a most charming, pretty, and gracious little girl Michaelita, the image of her grandmother; and a little boy, Edwardo, a living counterpart of Corregio's Amor. Madame C. reads with the children in the forenoon, whilst I draw and write in my own room. The afternoons and evenings we spend together. No one can live more agreeably than I do here, but the frenzy of drawing continues and leaves me no peace. I am drawing Madame C's portrait, that I may carry home with me her gentle countenance, her beautiful, intelligent eyes, which so faithfully mirror her soul. I am taking a portrait of the poetically-beautiful head of Sydney S. for his mother. I am drawing a group of their sweet children, and while I paint them I am enchanted by the witchery of their countenances, the beauty of their eyes. I am drawing the trees, and flowers, and fruit, and birds which surround me, and I am continually in a state of half desperation that I can get so little done in the short time that I have to remain here. This Caffatal is the most beautiful and the best kept of any which I have yet seen. The whole of this district is full of coffee plantations, and in the time of their prosperity every one of these is said to have been a little paradise of beauty and luxury; their proprietors emulating each other in magnificence of
