Palermo might have on the service in many different ways.

Troubridge and Captain Ball urged him with all the sincerity of
devotion not to return to Sicily, but to remain at Malta, and sign the
capitulation which was near at hand; but they could not alter his
resolve to leave the station, which Troubridge said was due to the
passion of infatuation and not to illness, which he had ascribed as
the reason. Nelson tried the patience of the First Lord (who was his
friend) so sorely that he wrote him a private letter which was couched
in gentle though, in parts, cutting reproaches. He obviously believed
that the plea of ill-health was groundless, or at all events not
sufficiently serious to justify him giving up. He very fairly states
that he is quite convinced that he will be more likely to recover his
health in England than by an inactive stay at the Court of Sicily,
however pleasing the gratitude shown him for the services he has
rendered may be, and that no gratitude from that Court can be too
great in view of the service he had bestowed upon it. Lord Minto, who
was Ambassador at Vienna, says he has letters from Nelson and Lady
Hamilton which do not make it clear whether he will go home or not. He
hopes he will not for his own sake, for he wants him to take Malta
first; and continues, "He does not seem conscious of the sort of
discredit he has fallen into, or the cause of it, for he still writes,
not wisely, about Lady Hamilton and all that," and then generously
states, "But it is hard to condemn and use ill a hero, as he is in his
own element, for being foolish about a woman who has art enough to
make fools of many wiser than an Admiral."

It is hardly possible to doubt that Nelson felt keenly mortified at
losing the opportunity of personally taking the _Guillaume Tell_; but
whether he did or not, he managed to subdue all appearance of envy and