ripened the day I came out of it into the most wretched cough I ever recollect having, as hard as the stone walls, and far more tight than the windows.’ In short, Newman was housebound, a close prisoner, and miserable enough, despite his successful completing of his ‘Patriarchal Sonnets.’ Archdeacon Froude forbade his going out to Church. The next day, Monday, he confides to the all-sympathetic bosom of his family: ‘I am properly taken at my word. I have been sighing for rest and quiet. This is the sixth day since I left the Lazaret, and I have hardly seen or spoken to anyone. The Froudes dine out every day; and are out all the morning, of course. Last night I put a blister on my chest; and never having had one on before, you may fancy my awkwardness in taking it off and dressing the place of it this morning. I ought to have had four hands. Our servant was with the Froudes…. Well, I am set upon a solitary life, and therefore ought to have experience what it is; nor do I repent…. I have sent to the library, and got _Marriage_[106] to read. Don’t smile――this juxtaposition is quite accidental! You are continually in my thoughts. I know what kindness I should have at home.’ He ends dismally, not without citing the Apostolic precedent of going not alone but two and two: ‘I wonder how long I shall last without any friend about me!’ One can imagine the anxiety and indignation of the devoted hearts at Iffley. Early in April their unfriended John Henry received his sister Jemima’s answer, distinctly uncomplimentary to Hurrell Froude; whereupon Newman rushed into explanation: he could not have Froude blamed; he had begged to be left alone (‘you know I can be very earnest in entreating to be left alone’): he had refused his repeated solicitations even to let him sit by him and read to him; he had, in short, driven him away. Hurrell, indeed, was not cut out by Nature for a nurse. Be that as it may, would it be far wrong to surmise that it was influenza which had been playing its now-well-understood tricks on Newman? But he made up like a lover for his passing semi-accusation. Froude, as it happened, was singularly well at this time, though the reprieve from discomfort was to be but brief. The three companions went from Malta to Messina, where, in wretched weather, they had divers small misadventures, shared with Rohan-Chabots. Hurrell kept, that week, a sort of journal of events; and the pages describing the capture of lodgings at Palermo seem worth transcription, since they show the revered Vicar of S. Mary-the-Virgin defeated by female diplomacy, and in the unexpected rôle of a sprinter.[107]