She thus writes to her friend E.:--
"April, 1843.
"Is there any talk of your coming to Brussels? During the bitter cold
weather we had through February, and the principal part of March, I
did not regret that you had not accompanied me. If I had seen you
shivering as I shivered myself, if I had seen your hands and feet as
red and swelled as mine were, my discomfort would just have been
doubled. I can do very well under this sort of thing; it does not
fret me; it only makes me numb and silent; but if you were to pass a
winter in Belgium, you would be ill. However, more genial weather is
coming now, and I wish you were here. Yet I never have pressed you,
and never would press you too warmly to come. There are privations
and humiliations to submit to; there is monotony and uniformity of
life; and, above all, there is a constant sense of solitude in the
midst of numbers. The Protestant, the foreigner, is a solitary being,
whether as teacher or pupil. I do not say this by way of complaining
of my own lot; for though I acknowledge that there are certain
disadvantages in my present position, what position on earth is
without them? And, whenever I turn back to compare what I am with
what I was--my place here with my place at Mrs.
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