This trip, like most of their trips, was dearly paid for by Mary’s illness. The fatigues, the changes, and the reaction after the excitement of society, disturbed her accustomed balance, nearly always; sometimes even before they reached home. So surely was this foreseen that she used to pack a strait waistcoat among her effects, on starting on any journey, however short. Her most distressing attack occurred on their way to Paris; a tour taken with needless rashness in the summer of 1822. She was seized with her mania in the diligence, not far from Amiens, and had to be left there in charge of the nurse, whom they had taken with them for just this emergency. It pleases us to learn that the friend who met and helped them there was an American, John Howard Payne. He escorted Mary to Paris, when she was fit to travel, two months later. There Crabb Robinson met them, and says: “Her only male friend is a Mr. Payne, whom she praises exceedingly for his kindness and attention to Charles. He is the author of ‘Brutus,’ and has a good face.” In the following year, the Lambs were able to make partial requital for Payne’s good services then, by helping him in his attempts to produce his plays and adaptations on the London and Paris boards. With but a short holiday before him, and friends awaiting him at Versailles, Charles had gone on from Amiens as soon as he could be spared; and had to leave Paris before Mary’s arrival. She found there a characteristic note from him for her guidance. After pointing out a few pictures in the Louvre for her scrutiny--he had a pretty taste in painting as well as in engraving--he told her: “You must walk all along the borough side of the Seine, facing the Tuileries. There is a mile and a half of print-shops and book-stalls. If the latter were but English! Then there is a place where Paris people put all their dead people, and bring them flowers and dolls and gingerbread nuts and sonnets, and such trifles. And that is all, I think, worth seeing as sights, except that the streets and shops of Paris are themselves the best sight.” This was about all--these sights, the folios he loved, the fricasseed frogs he learned to love, and his meeting with Talma--that he brought away from Paris. Nor has he left any record of his visit, or of its impressions on him, such as we should have cherished. V. “When you come Londonward you will find me no longer in Covent Garden; I have a cottage in Colebrook Row, Islington; a cottage, for it is detached; a white house with six good rooms; the New River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if a moderate walking pace can be so termed) close to the foot of the house; and behind is a spacious garden with vines (I assure you), pears, strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, cabbages, to delight the heart of old Alcinous.” Thus Lamb wrote on September 2, 1823, to Bernard Barton.