s Carlyle
in his _Reminiscences_, 'that night when he came to tell us, pale as
Hector's ghost.... It was like _half_ sentence of death to us both, and
we had to pretend to take it lightly, so dismal and ghastly was _his_
horror at it, and try to talk of other matters. He stayed three mortal
hours or so; his departure quite a relief to us. Oh, the burst of
sympathy my poor darling then gave me, flinging her arms round my neck,
and openly lamenting, condoling, and encouraging like a nobler second
self! Under heaven is nothing beautifuller. We sat talking till late;
'_shall_ be written again,' my fixed word and resolution to her. Which
proved to be such a task as I never tried before or since. I wrote out
"Feast of Pikes" (Vol. II.), and then went at it. Found it fairly
_impossible_ for about a fortnight; passed three weeks (reading
Marryat's novels), tried, cautious-cautiously, as on ice paper-thin,
once more; and in short had a job more like breaking my heart than any
other in my experience. Jeannie, alone of beings, burnt like a steady
lamp beside me. I forget how much of money we still had. I think there
was at first something like L300, perhaps L280, to front London with.
Nor can I in the least remember where we had gathered such a sum, except
that it was our own, no part of it borrowed or _given us_ by anybody.
"Fit to last till _French Revolution_ is ready!" and she had no
misgivings at all. Mill was penitently liberal; sent me L200 (in a day
or two), of which I kept L100 (actual cost of house while I had written
burnt volume); upon which he bought me "Biographie Universelle," which I
got bound, and still have. Wish I could find a way of getting the now
much macerated, changed, and fanaticised John Stuart Mill to take that
L100 back; but I fear there is no way.'[15]

Carlyle went diligently to work at the _French Revolution_. Some
conviction he had that the book was worth something. Once or twice among
the flood of equipages at Hyde Park Corner, when taking his afternoon
stroll, he thought to himself, 'Perhaps none of _you_ could do what I am
at!' But generally his feeling was, 'I will finish this book, throw it
at your feet, buy a rifle and spade, and withdraw to the Transatlantic
Wildernesses, far from human beggaries and basenesses!' 'This,' he says,
'had a kind of comfort to me; yet I always knew too, in the background,
that this would not practically do. In short, my nervous system had got
dreadfully irritated