t. It
is so dark in these lanes, and groves, when the moon's not bright"), he
sketched for me what he possibly might, and really did, accomplish. He
would by great effort finish the small book on the 20th; would fly to
Geneva for a week to work a little at _Dombey_, if he felt "pretty
sound;" in any case would finish his number three by the 10th of
November; and on that day would start for Paris: "so that, instead of
resting unprofitably here, I shall be using my interval of idleness to
make the journey and get into a new house, and shall hope so to put a
pinch of salt on the tail of the sliding number in advance. . . . I am
horrified at the idea of getting the blues (and bloodshots) again."
Though I did not then know how gravely ill he had been, I was fain to
remind him that it was bad economy to make business out of rest itself;
but I received prompt confirmation that all was falling out as he
wished. The Talfourds stayed two days: "and I think they were very
happy. He was in his best aspect; the manner so well known to us, not
the less loveable for being laughable; and if you could have seen him
going round and round the coach that brought them, as a preliminary to
paying the voiturier to whom he couldn't speak, in a currency he didn't
understand, you never would have forgotten it." His friends left
Lausanne on the 5th; and five days later he sent me two-thirds of the
manuscript of his Christmas book.

FOOTNOTES:

[127] Writing on Sunday he had said: "I hope to finish the second number
to-morrow, and to send it off bodily by Tuesday's post. On Wednesday I
purpose, please God, beginning the _Battle of Life_. I shall peg away at
that, without turning aside to _Dombey_ again; and _if_ I can only do it
within the month!" I had to warn him, on receiving these intimations,
that he was trying too much.

[128] The storm of rain formerly mentioned by him had not been repeated,
but the weather had become unsettled, and he thus referred to the
rainfall which made that summer so disastrous in England. "What a storm
that must have been in London! I wish we could get something like it,
here. . . . It is thundering while I write, but I fear it don't look black
enough for a clearance. The echoes in the mountains are of such a
stupendous sort, that a peal of thunder five or ten minutes long, is
here the commonest of circumstances. . . ." That was early in August, and
at the close of the month he wrote: "I forgot to tell you that y