MY DEAR MOTHER,--Your delightful letters duly arrived this morning. They were the only good feature of the day, which was not a success. Fanny was in bed--she begged I would not split upon her, she felt so guilty; but as I believe she is better this evening, and has a good chance to be right again in a day or two, I will disregard her orders. I do not go back, but do not go forward--or not much. It is, in one way, miserable--for I can do no work; a very little wood-cutting, the newspapers, and a note about every two days to write, completely exhausts my surplus energy; even Patience I have to cultivate with parsimony. I see, if I could only get to work, that we could live here with comfort, almost with luxury. Even as it is, we should be able to get through a considerable time of idleness. I like the place immensely, though I have seen so little of it--I have only been once outside the gate since I was here! It puts me in mind of a summer at Prestonpans and a sickly child you once told me of. Thirty-two years now finished! My twenty-ninth was in San Francisco, I remember--rather a bleak birthday. The twenty-eighth was not much better; but the rest have been usually pleasant days in pleasant circumstances. Love to you and to my father and to Cummy. From me and Fanny and Wogg. R. L. S. TO TREVOR HADDON _Campagne Defli, St. Marcel, Dec. 29th, 1882._ DEAR SIR,--I am glad you sent me your note, I had indeed lost your address, and was half thinking to try the Ringstown one; but far from being busy, I have been steadily ill. I was but three or four days in London, waiting till one of my friends was able to accompany me, and had neither time nor health to see anybody but some publisher people. Since then I have been worse and better, better and worse, but never able to do any work and for a large part of the time forbidden to write and even to play Patience, that last of civilised amusements. In brief, I have been "the sheer hulk" to a degree almost outside of my experience, and I desire all my friends to forgive me my sins of omission this while back. I only wish you were the only one to whom I owe a letter, or many letters. But you see, at least, you had done nothing to offend me; and I dare say you will let me have a note from time to time, until we shall have another chance to meet.--Yours sincerely, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. An excellent new year to you, and many of them. If you chance to see a paragraph in the papers describing my illness, and the "delicacies suitable to my invalid condition" cooked in copper, and the other ridiculous and revolting yarns, pray regard it as a spectral illusion, and pass by. [MRS. R. L. STEVENSON TO JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS I intercalate here Mrs. Stevenson's extremely vivid and characteristic account of the weird misadventures that befell the pair during their retreat from St. Marcel in search of a healthier home. [_Campagne Defli, St. Marcel, January 1883._]