“I have yours of the eighteenth, by which I find you were uneasy at my having the headache. It was your earnest desire obliges me to let you know when I have those little inconveniences of the headache, which are but too natural to me; but if you will promise to look upon my sicknesses as you used to do, by knowing I am sick one day and well another, I must not be punctual in acquainting you when I am uneasy. I think you are very happy in having dear Lady Mary with you; I should esteem myself so, if she could be sometimes for an hour with me; for the greatest ease I now have is sometimes sitting for an hour in my chair alone, and thinking of the happiness I may yet have, of living quietly with you, which is the greatest I propose to myself in the world.” At the very time of his investing the fortress of Huy, after being distracted by opposing councils, compelled to adopt plans which he disapproved, and harassed by fatigues, being often fourteen hours of the day on horseback, and marching sometimes five days together,[484]—it was in the midst of these trials of strength and patience that his heart turned towards home, and he found leisure, in the midst of a camp, to write those beautiful letters, unequalled for simplicity, and in the true expression of a tender and noble nature. Lord Godolphin had written to his friend the painful intelligence that he thought the Duchess to be much out of health. This information roused all the tenderness and apprehensions of the hero’s sensitive mind. “For God’s sake,” he writes, “let me know exactly how you are; and if you think my being with you can do you any good, you shall quickly see you are much dearer to me than fame, or whatever the world can say; for should you do otherwise than well, I were the unhappiest man living.” Notwithstanding the offer of this noble sacrifice—noble in one who was not merely carried on by impulse, but who had laid plans of the greatest extent for the aggrandizement of his country—the Duchess, who appears to have been a domestic tyrant, could never be wholly satisfied without incessant expressions of regard and devotion. She could not forbear, even at this distance, adding to his many troubles by her exacting spirit. She scrutinized even the language of affection, with the fastidiousness of a spoiled child, loath to be contented. From the following and other passages, we are led to conclude that the hopes of having a child to supply the loss of him from whom he had been severed, were, at one time, revived in the Duke’s mind. On a former occasion he wrote to his wife thus:— “What troubles me in all this time is your telling me that you do not look well. Pray let me have, in one of your letters, an account how you do. If it should prove such a sickness as that I might pity you, yet not be sorry for it, it might make me yet have more ambition. But if your sickness be really want of health, it would render me the unhappiest man living.”