asant news had given
him. "I really do not know what this story is worth. I am so floored:
wanting sleep, and never having had my head free from it for this month
past. I think there are some places in this last part which I may bring
better together in the proof, and where a touch or two may be of
service; particularly in the scene between Craggs and Michael Warden,
where, as it stands, the interest seems anticipated. But I shall have
the benefit of your suggestions, and my own then cooler head, I hope;
and I will be very careful with the proofs, and keep them by me as long
as I can. . . . Mr. Britain must have another Christian name, then? 'Aunt
Martha' is the Sally of whom the Doctor speaks in the first part. Martha
is a better name. What do you think of the concluding paragraph? Would
you leave it for happiness' sake? It is merely experimental. . . . I am
flying to Geneva to-morrow morning." (That was on the 18th of October;
and on the 20th he wrote from Geneva.) "We came here yesterday, and we
shall probably remain until Katey's birthday, which is next Thursday
week. I shall fall to work on number three of _Dombey_ as soon as I can.
At present I am the worse for wear, but nothing like as much so as I
expected to be on Sunday last. I had not been able to sleep for some
time, and had been hammering away, morning, noon, and night. A bottle of
hock on Monday, when Elliotson dined with us (he went away homeward
yesterday morning), did me a world of good; the change comes in the very
nick of time; and I feel in Dombeian spirits already. . . . But I have
still rather a damaged head, aching a good deal occasionally, as it is
doing now, though I have not been cupped--yet. . . . I dreamed all last
week that the _Battle of Life_ was a series of chambers impossible to be
got to rights or got out of, through which I wandered drearily all
night. On Saturday night I don't think I slept an hour. I was
perpetually roaming through the story, and endeavouring to dove-tail the
revolution here into the plot. The mental distress, quite horrible."

Of the "revolution" he had written to me a week before, from Lausanne;
where the news had just reached them, that, upon the Federal Diet
decreeing the expulsion of the Jesuits, the Roman Catholic cantons had
risen against the decree, the result being that the Protestants had
deposed the grand council and established a provisional government,
dissolving the Catholic league. His interest in this,