Scott's Diary from November, 1825, shows dear forebodings of the collapse of the houses of Constable and Ballantyne. In a time of universal confidence and prosperity, the banks had supported them to an extent quite unwarranted by their assets or their trade, and as soon as the banks began to doubt and to enquire, their fall was a foregone conclusion. In December, Scott borrowed £10,000 on the lands of Abbotsford, and advanced that sum to the struggling houses; on January 16, 1826, their ruin, and Scott's with them, were complete. Scott immediately placed his whole affairs in the hands of three trustees, and by the 26th all his creditors had agreed to a private trust to which he mortgaged all his future literary labours. On March 15, he left for the last time his house in Castle Street; on April 3; "Woodstock" was sold for the creditors' behoof, realising £8228; on May 15, Lady Scott died, after a short illness, at Abbotsford. "I think," writes Scott in his Diary, "my heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of all my family--all but poor Anne; an impoverished, embarrassed man, deprived of the sharer of my thoughts and counsels, who could always talk down my sense of the calamitous apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them alone. Even her foibles were of service to me, by giving me things to think of beyond my weary self-reflections." An expedition to Paris, in October, to gather materials for his "Life of Napoleon." was a seasonable relief. On his return through London, the King undertook that his son, Charles Scott, then at Oxford, should be launched in the diplomatic service. The elder son, heir to the baronetcy, was now with his regiment in Ireland. The "Life of Buonaparte" was published in June, 1827, and secured high praise from many, among whom was Goethe. It realised £18,000 for the creditors, and had health been spared him, Scott must soon have freed himself from all encumbrances. Before the close of 1829 he had published also the "Chronicles of the Canongate," "Tales of a Grandfather," "The Fair Maid of Perth" and "Anne of Geirstein," but he had been visited also by several threatenings of apoplexy, and on February 15, 1830, was prostrated by a serious attack. Recovering from this illness, Scott resigned his office as Clerk of Session, and during the rest of the year produced a great quantity of manuscript, including the "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft," and the series of "Tales of a Grandfather" dealing with French history. April, 1831, brought with it a distinct stroke of paralysis, yet both "Castle Dangerous" and "Count Robert of Paris" were finished in the course of the year.