MY DEAR COLVIN,--Of course I knew as well as you that I was merely running before an illness; but I thought I should be in time to escape. However I was knocked over on Monday night with a bad sore throat, fever, rheumatism, and a threatening of pleurisy, which last is, I think, gone. I still hope to be able to get away early next week, though I am not very clear as to how I shall manage the journey. If I don't get away on Wednesday at latest, I lose my excuse for going at all, and I do wish to escape a little while. I shall see about the form when I get home, which I hope will be to-morrow (I was taken ill in a friend's house and have not yet been moved). How could a broken-down engineer expect to make anything of _Roads_. Requiescant. When we get well (and if we get well), we shall do something better.--Yours sincerely, R. L. STEVENSON. Ye couche of pain. TO SIDNEY COLVIN _[Edinburgh, October 16, 1873], Thursday._ MY DEAR COLVIN,--I am at my wits' end about this abominable form of admission. I don't know what the devil it is; I haven't got one even if I did, and so can't sign. Monday night is the very earliest on which (even if I go on mending at the very great pace I have made already) I can hope to be in London myself. But possibly it is only intimation that requires to be made on Tuesday morning; and one may possess oneself of a form of admission up to the eleventh hour. I send herewith a letter which I must ask you to cherish, as I count it a sort of talisman. Perhaps you may understand it, I don't. If you don't understand it, please do not trouble and we must just hope that Tuesday morning will be early enough to do all. Of course I fear the exam. will spin me; indeed after this bodily and spiritual crisis I should not dream of coming up at all; only that I require it as a pretext for a moment's escape, which I want much. I am so glad that _Roads_ has got in. I had almost as soon have it in the Portfolio as the Saturday; the P. is so nicely printed and I am _gourmet_ in type. I don't know how to thank you for your continual kindness to me; and I am afraid I do not even feel grateful enough--you have let your kindnesses come on me so easily.--Yours sincerely, LOUIS STEVENSON. TO MRS. SITWELL When Stevenson a few days later came to London, it was before the physicians and not the lawyers that he must present himself; and the result of an examination by Sir Andrew Clark was his prompt and peremptory despatch to Mentone for a winter's rest and sunshine at a distance from all causes of mental agitation. This episode of his life gave occasion to the essay _Ordered South_, the only one of his writings in which he took the invalid point of view or allowed his health troubles in any degree to colour his work. Travelling south by slow stages, he wrote on the way a long diary-letter from which extracts follow:-- _Avignon [November 1873]._