“I am told you are likely to come up to town, and I cannot tell you how I would like to meet you. It may be, most probably is, my last appearance on these boards, for it is most unlikely I shall ever cross the Alps again, so that I entreat you let us have a shake hands, if only that we may recognise each other when on t’other side of the Styx.
“I shall be back in town to-morrow or the day after, and hope to hear news of you.
“I am afraid to write more, I am so overwhelmed by wheezing and nose-blowing.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, June 25, 1869.
“I have been coughing unceasingly since I saw you last, and with difficulty secured intervals to write these O’Ds. We made only a day’s delay at Paris, and came on here without resting at all.
“Of my wife I can only say she is not worse, but I dare not say she is better. The excessive heat here is very debilitating, especially coming after a somewhat rough spring.
“Sydney is pressing me to join her in a visit to a chateau in Croatia, where she is about to stay for a couple of months, but I can’t afford the time, though in one way it might repay me.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, July 9, 1869.