He took the best course of getting rid of the blues, however, by throwing himself heartily into such occupations as were to be had at Pau. The chief of these was a Pen and Pencil Club, to which most of the English and American residents belonged, and of which he became the secretary. Besides the ordinary meetings, for which he wrote a number of _vers de société_, on the current topics and doings of the place, the Club indulged in private theatricals. On these occasions he was stage manager, and frequently author; most of the charades and short pieces, which you have seen, and acted in, at Offley, were originally written by him for the Pen and Pencil Club at Pau. “It was a mild literary society,” an old friend writes to me, “which he carried almost entirely on his own shoulders, and made a success.” Then he set to work for the first time to cultivate in earnest his talent for music, and took to playing the violoncello, communicating intelligence of his own progress, and of musical doings at Pau generally, to his sister, whom he looked upon as his guide and instructress. These were not always devoid of incident, as for instance the following:— “PAU, VILLA SALUSBURY. “We have an opera here this season. The _prima donna_ and the tenor are good; the rest so-so. The orchestra and chorus bad; the basso execrable: when he doesn’t bellow like a bull, he neighs like a horse; however, he does his best. I don’t know how you feel, but to me a mediocre opera is an unmitigated bore. I would rather by half hear a good French play. There was a scene at the opera the other night. The conductor of the orchestra is the _amant_ of the contralto. Just before the opera began, the conductor in a jealous fit tried to strangle the contralto: whereupon the basso profundo knocked the conductor down: whereupon the conductor ran off towards the river to drown himself: whereupon he was knocked down again to save his life: whereupon he threatened to cut everybody’s throat: whereupon he was locked up in prison, and there remains. So there is no conductor, and the contralto can’t sing from the throttling.” The violoncello soon grew to be a resource, and I believe he played really well, though he used to groan to me as to the impossibility of adapting adult fingers to the work, and to mourn over the barbarism of our school days, when no one ever thought of music as a possible study for boys. Soon, however, other objects of deeper interest began to gather round him. His eldest boy was born in 1853, his second in 1855, during their summer in England.