e here have been enjoying splendid
weather, and a really fine day in England (I have seen only two since
May) is worth a week anywhere else.... You will find your volumes [543]
sent to you regularly. No. 1 caused big sensation. A wonderful leader
about it in Standard (Mrs. Gamp, of all people!) followed by abuse in
Pall Mall. I have come upon a young woman friend greedily reading it in
open drawing-room, and when I warned another against it, she answered:
'Very well, Billy [her husband] has a copy, and I shall read it at
once.'"

Later Burton's curiosity was aroused by the news that Mr. A. G. Ellis,
of the British Museum, had shown Mr. Kirby an edition of Alaeddin in
Malay. [544] "Let me know," he says, "when you go to see Mr. Ellis. I
especially want to accompany you, and must get that Malay version of
Alaeddin. Lord Stanley of Alderley could translate it."

It was about this time that Burton decided to make a new and lavishly
annotated translation of The Scented Garden. To the Kama Shastra edition
of 1886 we have already referred, and we shall deal fully with the whole
subject in a later chapter.

On October 6th the Burtons heard Mr. Heron Allen lecture on palmistry at
Hampstead. For some weeks Burton was prostrated again by his old enemy,
the gout, but Lord Stanley of Alderley, F. F. Arbuthnot, and other
friends went and sat with him, so the illness had its compensations. A
visit to Mr. John Payne, made, as usual, at tea time, is next recorded,
and there was to have been another visit, but Burton, who was anxious to
get to Folkestone to see his sister, had to omit it.

On January 10th 1887, he writes to Mr. Payne as follows:

"That last cup of tea came to grief, I ran away from London abruptly,
feeling a hippishness gradually creep over my brain; longing to see a
sight of the sun and so forth. We shall cross over next Thursday (if the
weather prove decent) and rush up to Paris, where I shall have some few
days' work in the Bibliotheque Nationale. Thence to Cannes, the
Riviera, &c. At the end of my 5th Vol. (Supplemental) I shall walk in to
Edin[burgh] Review. [545] ... I hope you like Vol. x. and its notices of
your work. I always speak of it in the same terms, always with the same
appreciation and admiration."

On January 13th 1887, the Burtons reached Paris, where Sir Richard
had the pleasure of meeting Herr Zotenberg, discoverer of the Arabic
originals of Alaeddin and Zayn al Asnam; and thence they proceeded