little volume of
stories. What a change this is from collecting dull notes for _John
Knox_, as I have been all the early part of the week--the difference
between life and death.--I am quite well again and in such happy
spirits, as who would not be, having spent so much of his time at that
convent on the hills with these sweet people. _Vous verrez_, and if you
don't like this story--well, I give it up if you don't like it. Not but
what there's a long way to travel yet; I am no farther than the
threshold; I have only set the men, and the game has still to be played,
and a lot of dim notions must become definite and shapely, and a deal be
clear to me that is anything but clear as yet. The story shall be
called, I think, _When the Devil was well_, in allusion to the old
proverb.

Good-bye.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

_17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh [January 1875]._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--I have worked too hard; I have given myself one day of
rest, and that was not enough; so I am giving myself another. I shall go
to bed again likewise so soon as this is done, and slumber most
potently.

9 P.M.--Slept all afternoon like a lamb.

About my coming south, I think the still small unanswerable voice of
coins will make it impossible until the session is over (end of March);
but for all that, I think I shall hold out jolly. I do not want you to
come and bother yourself; indeed, it is still not quite certain whether
my father will be quite fit for you, although I have now no fear of that
really. Now don't take up this wrongly; I wish you could come; and I do
not know anything that would make me happier, but I see that it is wrong
to expect it, and so I resign myself: some time after. I offered
Appleton a series of papers on the modern French school--the
Parnassiens, I think they call them--de Banville, Coppee, Soulary, and
Sully Prudhomme. But he has not deigned to answer my letter.

I shall have another Portfolio paper so soon as I am done with this
story, that has played me out; the story is to be called _When the Devil
was well_: scene, Italy, Renaissance; colour, purely imaginary of
course, my own unregenerate idea of what Italy then was. O, when shall I
find the story of my dreams, that shall never halt nor wander nor step
aside, but go ever before its face, and ever swifter and louder, until
the pit receives it, roaring? The Portfolio paper will be about Scotland
and England.--Ever yours,