I have gone back again in my story, and a breath of sea-air will do it good. Imagine me with the matron again. The change from the asylum and its associations to the little house by the seaside was very good in its effects. It was so for others than me; for the madmen there, poor fellows, seemed to me gentler and better in every way than they were when I saw them in the larger place. The warders were there to watch them, but had to be quiet and suppressed in a private house, and simply lived down-stairs as servants live. The breakfasts and dinners at the neat table, pleasantly presided over by a womanly hostess, were a relief indeed after my previous experience. That they should have proved so, when only she and I held consecutive conversation, and the other guests either kept silence or distracted us by strange words and antics enough to unnerve anybody, shows partially, I think, what the life which they 'relieved' must have been. The poor singer of the 'Hey-diddle-diddle' beer-song was in the house, and his way of carving his bread with his knife and fork 'intrigued' me much till the matron told me where I was. There, too, was the good parsley-eater, who died of Bright's disease; and it was there, just after I left the house, that he died. Only two or three days before he had to sit down to dine with us; and I remember the kindness with which the matron made him lie down upon the sofa, seeing the suffering of which he knew not how to speak, and sent him to his bed. A short time before he had calmly looked me in the face across the table, and pledged me in the vinegar-cruet, which he emptied. His brother, a clergyman, dined with us on a visit, and looked at me, I thought, with some curiosity. What was I doing _dans cette galère_ struck more than one. Seen among the associations and scenes of the asylum, I believe that any one might perhaps have thought me unfit to be removed, so completely ignorant was I, in common phrase, whether I was on my head or my heels. Twice a day, in the regular course of things, were the seven or eight lunatics who composed the seaside colony marched out for a constitutional walk, with a pack of warders at their heels, in the direction opposite to the town and streets. Those walks were trying enough; at the asylum, among the country roads and lanes, they had been fearful. The matron saved me from them as much as possible, as I have said, with the most thoughtful and considerate kindness. She took me with her to hear the band upon the pier, and to stroll about with her, a prisoner on parole, among the holiday-makers of the popular watering-place; and those diversions, which seem dull enough in ordinary life, appeared to me quite exceptionally delightful. It was better when we talked of books and things and people; and what she said and wrote of me I have already told. In the evening she would rescue me from the rest to let me sup quietly with herself, when I did not go next