is good Swiss-policy," he adds; and the idea (which was never carried
out) had certainly the merit of ingenuity, if no other.

The words "as soon as I get to Toulouse," in a letter written from
Paris on the 10th of April, might well have reminded Sterne of the
strange way in which he had carried out his intention of "wintering
in the South." He insists, however, upon the curative effects of his
winter of gaiety in Paris. "I am recovered greatly," he says; "and if
I could spend one whole winter at Toulouse, I should be fortified in
my inner man beyond all danger of relapsing." There was another, too,
for whom this change of climate had become imperatively necessary.
For three winters past his daughter Lydia, now fourteen years old,
had been suffering severely from asthma, and needed to try "the last
remedy of a warmer and softer air." Her father, therefore, was about
to solicit passports for his wife and daughter, with a view to their
joining him at once in Paris, whence, after a month's stay, they were
to depart together for the South. This application for passports he
intended, he said, to make "this week:" and it would seem that the
intention was carried out; but, for reasons explained in a letter
which Mr. Fitzgerald was the first to publish, it was not till the
middle of the next month that he was able to make preparation for
their joining him. From this letter--written to his Archbishop, to
request an extension of his leave--we learn that while applying for
the passports he was attacked with a fever, "which has ended the worst
way it could for me, in a _défluxion (de) poitrine_, as the French
physicians call it. It is generally fatal to weak lungs, so that I
have lost in ten days all I have gained since I came here; and from
a relaxation of my lungs have lost my voice entirely, that 'twill
be much if I ever quite recover it. This evil sends me directly to
Toulouse, for which I set out from this place directly my family