On the 28th he notices that Colonel Warren is made a K.C.M.G., and that poor Mr. Zech, whom we visited last year, died on the 29th.
Colonel Rathborne wrote in 1883:—
"21, Leamington Road Villas, Westbourne Park, W.,
"December 4th, 1883.
"My dear Burton,
"Thanks for your kindly note, which came to hand this morning. Would that in reply I could give as good an account of my time as you give. What a constitution of brass—no, of iron—yours must be! I am so glad that you are writing your own biography.[2] What a tale of stirring adventure by sea and land you will have to narrate! I can quite fancy, however, that if you had the choice, you would add a little active work now and then to the otium of endless scribbling. For the life of me, I cannot divine why your services have not been called into requisition during the late Egyptian imbroglios. As far as I know, we have not had a man in that country, save Rogers, conversant with the Arabic, and hardly one who can be accused of anything like a knowledge of Eastern peoples. I do not quite make out whether you are serious or not in the programme which you have drawn out for settling the Egyptian difficulty. In one point, at least, and that the principal point, viz. definite annexation, it coincides with what I wrote to our Jupiter Tonans."
He was very gouty all this month, but not laid up. He was able to attend the school feast and fête at Opçina, and was able to go to a masquerade ball at Baroness Morpurgo's. He was "Cœur de Lion;" I was "Berengaria," his wife; and Blanche was the goose-girl, out of the Christmas number of the Graphic. There was a very witty comédie performed by amateurs.
I now wrote a book called "The Sixth Sense," and was vain enough to think it very clever; but I was afraid it would do harm, and I took the courage to burn it.
We gave our usual Christmas-parties in January. He was also able to take plenty of drives with me, but could not walk much. We passed our lives between Trieste and Opçina, carrying our literature up and down. One of his great amusements was a small donkey which used to run into the terrace-garden, which overlooked the sea, where we used to breakfast, and the donkey and the setter used to have games of romps like two kittens playing, the donkey racing round the place, biting and kicking, and the setter dodging him. They seemed to know exactly what they were to do, and they came every day at the same hour to play.
Richard now took an immense dislike to our house in Trieste, where we had been over ten years. The fact is, I had increased it in my ambition to twenty-seven rooms, and just as I had made it perfection, he wanted to leave it. Certainly Providence directed, for shortly after that, the drainage got so very bad there as to be incurable, and after he got really ill, and his heart weak, it would have been impossible for him to mount the hundred and twenty steps, four stories high, to go in and out. We ransacked the whole of Trieste, but there was only one house that suited us in any way, and there was not the least likelihood of our being able to get it, as it was occupied; but, curiously to say, six months later we did get it, and got housed in it the following July.
On the 24th of February we had a great shock in the death of poor Reich, our fencing-master. He went out well dressed, with a cigar in his mouth, very early, took a walk in the Via Riborgo, mounted some steps, put a pistol to his head, and blew his brains out. Some people ran, hearing the pistol; he was quite dead, but his cigar was still alight. Suicide is the commonest thing in the world in Trieste; nobody takes any account of it. The fact is that he had been getting into bad health. An Italian fencing-master had set up in the town, and got all his best Italian pupils away. I had not fenced at all the winter 1882-3, and Richard, of course, had been away so much and had had many twinges of gout, and therefore it was a matter of great reproach to us that we had not gone and paid him visits, and cheered him up, and looked after him—so often a little friendship prevents a man from going to this extremity. Richard felt it for a long time.
Reich was a Bohemian and an old trooper, and Richard said he was the best broadswordsman he had ever seen. He has frequently told me to stand steady, and he has made a moulinet at me; you could hear the sword swish in the air, and he has touched my face like a fly in the doing of it. He did it frequently to show what he could do, but he used to say that he would not do it to any of his men pupils, for fear they should flinch either one way or the other, which would of course have cut their faces open; but he knew I should stand steady. I liked that.