took the last sacrament with her as she lay dying, so we may reasonably suppose that she died having forgiven him, and it is not unfair to imagine that the trip abroad was a second honeymoon. They were two grown-up children, playing with life as with a new toy. Mrs. Pepys was liable to attacks of boils in asterisks; and a Dr. Williams acquired considerable merit by supplying her with plasters and ointments. On November 16, 1663, “Mr. Hollyard came, and he and I about our great work to look upon my wife’s malady, which he did, and it seems her great conflux of humours heretofore that did use to swell there did in breaking leave a hollow which has since gone in further and further till it is now three inches deep, but as God will have it did not run into the body-ward, but keeps to the outside of the skin, and so he will be forced to cut open all along, and which my heart will not serve me to see done, and yet she will not have no one else to see it done, no, not even her mayde, and so I must do it poor wretch for her.” Pepys is in a panic at the thought of assisting at the opening of this subcutaneous abscess; one can feel the courage oozing out at the palms of his hands as one reads his agitated words. To his joy, next morning Mr. Hollyard, on second thoughts, “believes a fomentation will do as well, and what her mayde will be able to do as well without knowing what it is for, but only that it is for the piles.” Evidently the “mayde’s” opinion was of some little moment in Mrs. Pepys’s censorious world. Mr. Pepys would have been much troubled to see his wife cut before his face: “he could not have borne to have seen it.” Mr. Hollyard received £3 “for his work upon my wife, but whether it is cured or not I cannot say, but he says it will never come to anything, but it may ooze now and again.” Mr. Hollyard was evidently easily satisfied. Of course, there must have been a sinus running in somewhere, but it is impossible to guess at its origin. Possibly some pelvic sepsis; possibly an ischio-rectal abscess. A long time before he had noted that his wife was suffering from a “soare belly,” which may possibly have been the beginning of the trouble, but there is no mention of any long and serious illness such as usually accompanies para-metric sepsis. On the whole, I fancy ischio-rectal abscess to be the most likely explanation. Later on she suffers from abscesses in the cheek, which “by God’s mercy burst into the mouth, thus not spoiling her face”; and she had constant trouble with her teeth. It is thus quite probable that the origin of the whole illness may have been pyorrhœa, and no doubt this would go hard with her in the fever from which she died. Possibly this may have been septic pneumonia arising from septic foci in the mouth; but, after all, it is idle to speculate.