What is desired is a speedy settlement, on reasonable terms—­as good terms as possible; but let the settlement be speedy.  This, I think, is the fixed idea of all.  Gros tells me that when he took leave the Emperor grasped both his hands, thanked him with effusion, and said that not one man in fifty would make such a sacrifice as he (Gros) was doing.

Monday, 30th.—­I do not know whether I shall do much more to this letter before I reach Malta, for we are both rolling and pitching, which is not favourable to writing, the climate has now changed.  It is very near perfection in point of temperature.  If we could only keep it so all the way!  We expect to reach Malta this evening, and remain about four hours.  Where are you now?...  Have you returned to your desolate home?  I think I see B. looking up to you with his thoughtful eyes, and dear little L. putting pointed questions, and, in her arch way, saying such kind and tender words!...  You must continue to write, as you did last time, all you are doing and thinking, that I may reproduce, as faithfully as I can, the life which you are living.  I do the same by you, though it is with a more leaden pen than formerly....  Poor Gros has retired to his cabin in order to take a horizontal position.  Many of my companions are in the same way.

[Sidenote:  Old letters.]

May 3rd.—­Are you still shivering in the cold, while I am gliding through the calm sea under an awning, and going against a breeze sufficiently light to do no more than fan us pleasantly?  If it would never go beyond this, there is certainly something very delightful in such a climate; the clear atmosphere, bright stars, light nights, and soft air; and to be wafted along through all this, as we now are, at the rate of some twelve miles an hour, with so little motion that we hardly know that we are making progress.  It will be a different story, I fear, when we get into the Red Sea, where we may expect a wind behind us, and around us the hot air of the Desert!...  I have been employing myself for a good part of to-day in a sad work.  I took with me a number of letters of very old date, and have been looking over them, and tearing up a great part of them, and throwing them overboard.  I thought it would be an occupation suited to this heavy tropical sea-life.  I shall be sorry when it is over, as it is also soothing, and brings back many pleasing memories which had nearly faded away.  Some few I keep, because they are landmarks of my past life.

[Sidenote:  The Pyramids.] [Sidenote:  The Sphinx.]

Steamer ’Simla.’—­May 9th.—­I had only a few moments to write before we left Suez, and my writing, such as it was, I performed under difficulties, as the bustle of passengers finding their cabins, and conveying to them their luggage, or such portions of it as they could rescue from its descent into the hold, was going on all around me.  I had, therefore,