The October of 1896 saw Beardsley draw the delightful _Cover for the November Savoy, No. 7_, of spectacled old age boring youth “by the book” (there was much chatter at this time over Ibsen’s phrase of “Youth is knocking at the Gate”). Beardsley also wrote the beautiful translation, and made the even more beautiful and famous drawing _Ave atque Vale_ or “Hail and Farewell” for the _Carmen C I of Catullus_, whilst the third illustration for the November _Savoy_, the small _Tristan and Isolde_, shows his interest maintained in the musical sequence that was ever present in his thoughts, and which he intended to be gathered into book-form. Indeed, the whole of this October, Beardsley was at work writing a narrative version of Wagner’s _Das Rheingold_, “most of the illustrations being already finished,” as he himself testifies. Dent, to whom he had sent the drawing of _Tannhäuser returning to the Horselberg_, was trying to induce Beardsley at this time to illustrate the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ for him. The month of October had opened for Beardsley happy and cheerful over a bright fire with books; it went out in terror for him. He fights hard to clamber from the edge of the grave that yawns, and he clutches at gravelly ground. A fortnight’s bleeding from the lungs terrified him. “I am quite paralysed with fear,” he cries--“I have told no one of it. It’s so dreadful to be so weak as I am becoming. Today I had hoped to pilfer ships and seashores from Claude, but work is out of the question.” Yet before the last of October he was more hopeful again and took “quite a long walk and was scarcely tired at all afterwards. So my fortnight’s bleeding does not seem to have done me much injury.” His only distress made manifest was that he could not see his sister Mabel, about to start on her American theatrical tour. [Illustration: HEADPIECE: PIERROT WITH THE HOUR-GLASS] [Illustration: TAILPIECE TO “PIERROT OF THE MINUTE”] November was to be rich in achievement for Aubrey Beardsley. It was to see him give to the world one of the most perfect designs that ever came from his hands, a design that seems to sum up and crown the achievement of this great period of his art--he writes that he has just finished “rather a pretty set of drawings for a foolish playlet of Ernest Dowson’s, _The Pierrot of the Minute_” which was published in the following year of 1897--a grim irony that a boredom should have brought forth such beauty! As he writes Finis to this exquisite work, he begs for a good book to illustrate! Yet on the 5th of this November a cry of despair escapes him: “Neither rest or fine weather seem to avail anything.”