By the 6th of July he had moved to the Spread Eagle Hotel at Epsom; where he set to work on illustrating _Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves_ as a Christmas Book--for which presumably was the fine _Ali Baba in the Wood_. But sadly enough, the poor stricken fellow is now fretted by his “entire inability to walk or exert himself in the least.” Suddenly he bends all his powers on illustrating _Lysistrata_! and in this July of 1896, broken by disease, he pours out such blithe and masterly drawings for the _Lysistrata_ as would have made any man’s reputation--but alas! masterpieces so obscene that they could only be printed privately. However, the attacks of hemorrhage from the lungs were now very severe, and the plagued man had to prepare for another move--it is a miracle that, with death staring him in the face, and with his tormented body torn with disease, Beardsley could have brought forth these gay lyrical drawings wrought with such consummate skill that unfortunately the world at large can never look upon--the _Lysistrata_. It is almost unthinkable that Beardsley’s mind could have allowed his exquisite art to waste itself upon the frank obscenity which he knew, when he drew these wonderful designs, must render them utterly impossible for publication--that he should have deliberately sacrificed so much to the naughtinesses. Yet as art they are of a high order--they utter the emotions of unbridled sexuality in reckless fashion--their very mastery renders them the more impossible to publish. He knew himself full well that the work was masterwork--“I have just completed a set of illustrations to Lysistrata, I think they are in a way the best things I have ever done,” he writes to his friend the priest, John Gray, who is now striving his hardest to win him into the Roman Catholic Church. Gray realises that the end is near. Beardsley planned that the _Lysistrata_ should be printed in pale purple.... It was probable that Beardsley reached the _Lysistrata_ of Aristophanes through the French translation of Maurice Donnay--he was so anxious to assert that the purple illustrations were to appear with the work of Aristophanes in book form, not with Donnay’s translation! The _Lysistrata_ finished, he turned to the translation and obscene illustration of the _Sixth Satire of Juvenal_. But even before the month of July was out, he had to be packed off hurriedly to Pier View, Boscombe, by Bournemouth, where, in a sad state of health, he passed his twenty-fourth birthday. The place made his breathing easier, but the doctor is “afraid he cannot stop the mischief.” Beardsley found relief--in the _Juvenal_ drawings! “I am beginning to feel that I shall be an exile from all nice places for the rest of my days,” he writes pathetically. He loathed Boscombe. [Illustration: THE COIFFING] [Illustration: COVER DESIGN FOR “THE SAVOY” _NO_. 4.]