"If I live in Paris," he wrote, "I may be doomed to things I don't desire. I am afraid of big towns. Here I get up at 7.30.... I am happy all day. I go to bed at 10 o'clock. I am frightened of Paris.... I want to live here." He visited the little chapel of Notre Dame de Liesse, and persuaded the cure to celebrate Mass there. He made friends with a farmer and urged him to adopt three children. He found that the customs-officers were bored, and lent them the novels of Dumas pere. And on the day of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee he entertained forty children from the school with their master so successfully that for days after they cheered when he passed: "Vive Monsieur Melmoth[9] et la Reine d'Angleterre." In his first enthusiasm for Berneval he wished to build a house there, and did, indeed, take a chalet for the season, giving Mr. Ross, through whom his allowance passed, all sorts of amusing reasons for doing so, and for hurrying on the necessary preliminaries. He planned the arrangement of the house with something of the impatient delight of a student furnishing his first independent rooms. He asked for his pictures, and for Japanese gold paper that should provide a fitting background for lithographs by Rothenstein and Shannon. The Chalet Bourgeat was ready for habitation on June 21. A month later he wrote of _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_: "The poem is nearly finished. Some of the verses are awfully good." He had left prison with an improved physique, and, now that he was able to work, there was hope that he would not risk the loss of it by leaving this life of comparative simplicity. Suddenly, however, he flung aside his plans and resolutions, desperately explaining that his folly was inevitable. The iterated entreaty of a man whose friendship had already cost him more than it was worth, and a newly-felt loneliness at Berneval, destroyed his resolution. He became restless and went to Rouen, where it rained and he was miserable; then back to Dieppe; a few days later, with his poem still unfinished, he was in Naples sharing a momentary magnificence with the friend whose conduct he had condemned, whose influence he had feared. * * * * *