During the autumn his indisposition increased, and his home letters show that the wonderful elasticity of spirit, which, as his brother remarks, had hitherto carried him lightly and joyously through life, over all its rubs and cares, now seemed to flag. He had an ailing winter, and with the spring came news of his mother’s illness. He could only write with difficulty:--“If it please God, I will certainly be at Penzance the last week in October or the first in November.” He never saw her again; she rallied for a time, but died somewhat suddenly in September. Davy never really recovered from the shock of her death. It was with the greatest difficulty that he was able to preside at the anniversary meeting of the Society on the ensuing St. Andrew’s Day. The effort was so marked that those near him feared he was on the verge of apoplexy, and he was too ill to attend the dinner. A few weeks later he had a slight attack of paralysis, from which he only slowly recovered. His good friend Dr. Babington[J] ordered him abroad, away from “the convivial epicurean habits of London society,” and from “the many annoyances and causes of injurious excitement to which he was exposed at home.” He set out with his brother John, in the depth of winter--“a dreary beginning of a dreary journey.” He avoided Paris; he would not even pass through it, so apprehensive was he that he should not escape from “the allurement--or, rather, excitement--of its society” if he stopped there. The roads were in a wretched state, the country covered with snow, and “no object to arrest the eye, except a village here and there rising out of the white waste, or a distant steeple, or some solitary tree.” The cold was intense, and once or twice the travellers were benighted, the wheels of their carriage being locked in the frozen ruts. As they passed through the towns Davy, who seemed to cling to life with a passionate tenacity, would visit the churches, and, falling on his knees, would offer up a silent prayer. They crossed Mont Cenis in a storm of wind and amidst drifting snow, and with great difficulty got down to Susa on sledges. The snow in Lombardy was deeper than in the passes of the Alps, and even at Ravenna, where they arrived in the first week of March, it was still to be seen in the ditches. Here his brother left him, his duties as an army surgeon calling him to Corfu. In spite of severe weather, the discomforts of travelling at such a time, and the forced delays at wretched inns, Davy gradually improved; his brother noted before he left that he was certainly stronger, less paralytic, and more active. He wrote to his friend Poole:-- [J] “Babington, the best and warmest-hearted friend, the kindest husband and father, and perhaps the most disinterested physician of his time; with good talents, and a fine tact, and a benevolence which created sympathy for him wherever he appeared, and I believe often cured his patients.”