delight you were taking in the presence and society of some still
more youthful, fair, and gay _monstrum amandum_, some prodigy of
intellectual accomplishment, some little Circe who never turned
anybodies into pigs. I learnt too from her for the first time that you
were settled at Hampstead! Whereabout at Hampstead, and for how long?
She didn't tell me _that_, thinking of course that I knew something
more about you than I do. Yes indeed; you _do_ treat me very shabbily.
I agree with you in thinking so. To think that so many hills and woods
should interpose between us--that I should be lying here, fast bound
by a spell, a sleeping beauty in a forest, and that _you_, who used
to be such a doughty knight, should not take the trouble of cutting
through even a hazel tree with your good sword, to find out what
had become of me. Now do tell me, the hazel tree being down at last,
whether you mean to live at Hampstead, whether you have taken a
house there and have carried your books there, and wear Hampstead
grasshoppers in your bonnet (as they did at Athens) to prove yourself
of the soil.

All this nonsense will make you think I am better, and indeed I am
pretty well just now--quite, however, confined to the bed--except when
lifted from it to the sofa baby-wise while they make it; even then
apt to faint. Bad symptoms too do not leave me; and I am obliged to be
blistered every few days--but I am free from any attack just now, and
am a good deal less feverish than I am occasionally. There has been
a consultation between an Exeter physician and my own, and they agree
exactly, both hoping that with care I shall pass the winter, and rally
in the spring, both hoping that I may be able to go about again with
some comfort and independence, although I never can be fit again for
anything like exertion....