It is comparatively easy to set our teeth and face the inevitable with 'a grin;' but the 'highest bravery' is to hide our anguish with a smile. I do think I make a decently good Stoic, but confess that in times like this Christians have the pull. Nevertheless, I have often thought of the words, 'I am not in the least afraid to die,'[120] and wondered, when my time should come, I would be able to say them. But now I know that I can, and this even in the bitterness of feeling that one's work is prematurely cut short.... 'Somewhat too much of this,' however. What I want to tell you is that I managed to get to London on Friday for the purpose of consulting my doctors as to my prospects. They take a more hopeful view than I expected, _i.e._ notwithstanding that I have had three attacks in one year (in both eyes and now in the brain), it is not _inevitable_ that I should have another for years to come, provided that I become a strict teetotaller, vegetarian, hermit, and abstainer from work. In short, 'that my rule of life,' 'the exemplar' for my 'imitation,' is to be that of a tortoise. Hence it does not appear that there is any immediate necessity for saying farewell to my friends, and hence also I will not bother you by falling in with your kind proposal to come over from Cambridge to see me, much as I should like to see you in any case. But if you would care to pay a visit to Oxford any time between this and to-morrow week (16th), when I shall start for the vicinity of Nice, we should both be awfully glad to put you up. I think Dyer will probably be with us from Saturday to Monday (14 to 16). With our united very kind regards to all, Yours ever sincerely, G. J. ROMANES. Then came the journey to Costebelle, which he describes as follows: _To James Romanes, Esq._ Hôtel l'Ermitage, Costebelle: November 4, 1893. My dearest James,--I ought to have answered long ago the kind letter which I received from you just as I was driving to the Oxford station, and read in the train. But I am still such a wretched invalid that I shrink from the smallest exertion, whether of body or mind. I caught a violent cold in crossing the Channel, which kept me in bed for three days at Amiens, and left me so weak that I had to further break the journey at Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles--finally arriving here with a still feverish temperature. But this has now subsided.