The intimacy between Morny and Sir Joseph Olliffe, an old friend of ours whom we all loved, was something more, if possible, than that between physician and patient. There was a very firm attachment between the two, and they were engaged in an affair in which they both took the greatest interest. It was they who built Deauville upon a site which I remember a flat wilderness of sand, with a few scanty bristles of rushes cropping up here and there, opposite Trouville, on the other side of the outlet of the river Toucques. It is only fair to say that if Mora in the “Nabab” was a more or less faithful portrait of Morny, Jenkins, the quack Doctor, was certainly not drawn from Sir Joseph Olliffe, who was as upright and transparent an English gentleman as ever entered the medical profession. He was respected and loved by all who knew him. On the night of the Duc de Morny’s death I left Paris for Marseilles. A terrible voyage on board the P. & O. s.s. _Massilia_. The Gulf of Lyons was in a perfect fury, and the passengers sea-sick and mostly sulky at having to go out to “meet” the hot weather on the other side. This made ladies out of season, but my cabin-companion—one of those grumblers who are such a misfortune in the East—told me that even if it had been to “meet” the cool weather he should have left his wife and children behind; according to him India was not a fit place for an English sow, let alone an English gentlewoman. The sea was so high that even the live stock on board suffered. Bets were going as to whether one bullock would survive the night of the 17th of March—odds against were laid freely. I do not remember which won—the sea or the bullock. When the railway deposited us at Suez (there was no Canal in those days) we were shipped on board the _Simla_, a crack ship. I had the luck to be separated from my grumbling ship-mate of the _Massilia_, and was doubled up with Colonel Gloster, who was going out to command the —— Regiment in India. He and I and Overbeck with one or two others made a very pleasant little coterie. How much more delightful were the ships of those days, with their beautiful, free, white decks and a view of the sea all round, than the modern floating castles, with all their extravagances and luxurious discomforts. Everything was spick and span, the metal fittings and binnacle shone like the gold in a Regent Street jeweller’s shop. The decks were so clean that you might have eaten your dinner off them, and the quartermasters, as smart as blue-jackets in the Navy, were always on the alert to put the crooked straight or render some small service. It was like yachting in its highest perfection.