Please, my dear Brown, forgive my horrid delay. Symonds overworked and knocked up. I off my sleep; my wife gone to Paris. Weather lovely.—Yours ever, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. Monte Generoso in May; here, I think, till the end of April; write again, to prove you are forgiving. TO MR. AND MRS. THOMAS STEVENSON _Hotel du Pavillon Henry IV._, _St. Germain-en-Laye_, _Sunday_, _May_ 1_st_, 1881. MY DEAR PEOPLE,—A week in Paris reduced me to the limpness and lack of appetite peculiar to a kid glove, and gave Fanny a jumping sore throat. It’s my belief there is death in the kettle there; a pestilence or the like. We came out here, pitched on the _Star_ and _Garter_ (they call it Somebody’s pavilion), found the place a bed of lilacs and nightingales (first time I ever heard one), and also of a bird called the _piasseur_, cheerfulest of sylvan creatures, an ideal comic opera in itself. ‘Come along, what fun, here’s Pan in the next glade at picnic, and this-yer’s Arcadia, and it’s awful fun, and I’ve had a glass, I will not deny, but not to see it on me,’ that is his meaning as near as I can gather. Well, the place (forest of beeches all new-fledged, grass like velvet, fleets of hyacinth) pleased us and did us good. We tried all ways to find a cheaper place, but could find nothing safe; cold, damp, brick-floored rooms and sich; we could not leave Paris till your seven days’ sight on draft expired; we dared not go back to be miasmatised in these homes of putridity; so here we are till Tuesday in the _Star and Garter_. My throat is quite cured, appetite and strength on the mend. Fanny seems also picking up. If we are to come to Scotland, I _will_ have fir-trees, and I want a burn, the firs for my physical, the water for my moral health.—Ever affectionate son, R. L. S. TO EDMUND GOSSE _Pitlochry_, _Perthshire_, _June_ 6, 1881.