Stevenson's health quickly mended. Thence they returned as far as Hyeres. Staying here through the greater part of February, at the Hotel des Iles d'Or, and finding the place to their liking, they cast about once more for a resting-place, and were this time successful. The house chosen by the Stevensons at Hyeres was not near the sea, but inland, on the road above the old town and beneath the ruins of the castle. The Chalet La Solitude it was called; a cramped but habitable cottage built in the Swiss manner, with a pleasant strip of garden, and a view and situation hardly to be bettered. Here he and his family lived for the next sixteen months (March 1883 to July 1884). To the first part of this period he often afterwards referred as the happiest time of his life. His malady remained quiescent enough to afford, at least to his own buoyant spirit, a strong hope of ultimate recovery. He delighted in his surroundings, and realised for the first time the joys of a true home of his own. The last shadow of a cloud between himself and his parents had long passed away; and towards his father, now in declining health, and often suffering from moods of constitutional depression, the son begins on his part to assume, how touchingly and tenderly will be seen from the following letters, a quasi-paternal attitude of encouragement and monition. At the same time his work on the completion of the _Silverado Squatters_, on _Prince Otto_, the _Child's Garden of Verses_ (for which his own name was _Penny Whistles_), on the _Black Arrow_ (designated hereinafter, on account of its Old English dialect, as "tushery"), and other undertakings prospered well. In the autumn the publication of _Treasure Island_ in book form brought with it the first breath of popular applause. The reader will see how modest a price Stevenson was content, nay, delighted, to receive for this classic. It was two or three years yet before he could earn enough to support himself and his family by literature: a thing he had always been earnestly bent on doing, regarding it as the only justification for his chosen way of life. In the meantime, it must be understood, whatever help he needed from his father was from the hour of his marriage always amply and ungrudgingly given. In September of the same year, 1883, Stevenson had felt deeply the death of his old friend James Walter Ferrier (see the essay _Old Mortality_ and the references in the following letters). But still his health held out fairly, until, in January 1884, on a visit to Nice, he was unexpectedly prostrated anew by an acute congestion of the internal organs, which for the time being brought him to death's door. Returning to his home, his recovery had been only partial when, after four months (May 1884), a recurrence of violent hemorrhages from the lung once more prostrated him completely; soon after which he quitted Hyeres, and the epidemic of cholera which broke out there the same summer prevented all thoughts of his return.