Mrs. D.'s attack is not serious, but it is very distressing. She has got the notion into her head that foreign apothecaries have a general pardon for poisoning, and so she requires that some of us should always take part of her physic before she touches it. The consequence is that I have been going through a course of treatment that would have pushed an elephant rather hard. I can stand some things pretty well; but what they call réfrigérants, Tom, play the devil with me! and I am driven to brandy and water to an extent that I can scarcely call myself quite sober at any time of the day. Were we at home in Dodsborough, there would be none of this; so that here, again, is another of the blessings of our foreign experiences! Ah, Tom! it's all a mistake from beginning to end. You would n't know your old friend if you saw him; and although they've padded me out, and squeezed me in, I 'm not the man I used to be! You tell me that I'm not to expect any more money till November; but you forgot to tell me how I 'm to live without it. We compromised with the Jews for fifteen hundred. Our "extraordinaries," as the officials would call them, amounted to three more; so that, taking all things into account, we have been living since April last at a trifle more than eleven thousand a year. It's a mercy that when they sell a man out by the Encumbered Estates Court, they ask no impertinent questions about how he contracted his debts. I 'd cut a sorry figure under such an examination. We have begun the economy, Tom, and I hope that even you will be satisfied; for although this place is detestable to me, here I 'll stay, if my hearing can stand it, till winter. Mary Anne says we might as well be in Birmingham, and my reply is, I'm quite ready to go there! I own to you I have a kind of diabolical delight in seeing them all nonplussed. There are neither dukes nor marquises here, neither princesses nor ballet-dancers! The most reckless spendthrift could only ruin himself in steam-boilers, gun-barrels, and kitchen-rauges; there's nothing softer than cast-iron in the whole town. Our rooms are in the third story. James and I dine at the public table. Our only piece of extravagance is the doctor that attends Mrs. D.; and if you saw him, you 'd scarcely give him the name of a luxury! I needn't say that there is very little pleasure in all this; indeed, for anything _I_ see, I think we might be leading the same kind of life in Kilmainham Jail; and perhaps at last they 'll see this themselves, and consent to return home. I go out for an hour's walk every day, but it does me little good. My usual stroll is to a shot factory, and back by a patent bolt and rivet establishment; but this avoids the theatre, for I own to you Nabucco, as they call him for shortness, shouts in a manner that makes me quite irritable.