Richard now, intending to make a little tour, and to meet me at Trieste in two or three weeks, went to Hamburg, to Berlin, and to Leipzig to see Tauchnitz, and to Dresden. I packed up and started on my journey Triestewards. As I was about to get into the cab at my father's door a beggar woman asked me for charity, and I gave her a shilling, and she said, "God bless you, and may you reach your home without an accident!" These words made an impression on me afterwards. I slept in Boulogne that night, and went on to Paris the following day. The day after, the 30th of April, I ordered a _voiture de place_, and was going out to do a variety of visits and commissions. They had been waxing the stairs till they were as slippery as ice. I had heels to my boots, and I took one long slide from the top of the stairs to the bottom, with my leg doubled under me, striking my head and my back on every stair. When I arrived at the bottom I was unconscious, picked up, and taken back to bed. When I came to I said, "I have no time to lose. Don't send the carriage away; I must get my work done and go on;" but, when I attempted to get out of bed, I fell on the floor and fainted again. A doctor was fetched, I was undressed, my boot and stocking had to be cut away; the whole of my leg was as black as ink, and so swollen that at first the doctor thought it was broken. However, it proved to be only a bad sprain and a twisted ankle. Instead of stopping there six weeks, as the doctor said I must, I had myself bound up and conveyed to the Gare de Lyons on the fourth day, where, with a _wagon-lit_, I arrived at Turin in twenty-four hours. There I had to be conveyed to the hotel, being too bad to go on; but next day I insisted on being packed up again, and having another _coupé-lit_ in the train to Mestre. I suffered immensely from the heat, for the first time since leaving England. At Mestre I had to wait four hours in the wretched station, sitting on a chair with my leg hanging down, which gave me intense pain, and then to embark in the _Post-Zug_, a slow train, where there were no _coupé-lits_ to be had, arriving at half-past eight in the morning, where I found Richard waiting to receive me on the platform, and I was carried home and put into my own bed. In spite of pain I was as charmed as ever with the run down from Nabresina to dear old Trieste.