saw her.  The effect of these various causes upon his health was so great, that the physicians, as early as January, 1804, were advising his return.  “The medical gentlemen are wanting to survey me, and to send me to Bristol for the re-establishment of my health,” he tells Minto; but he adds, “do not mention it (it is my concern) I beg of you.”  Reports were then unusually persistent that the enemy was about to put to sea. “I must not be sick until after the French fleet is taken.”

To the last moment the destination of the French and the purposes of Bonaparte remained unknown to him, a fruitful source of guessing and worry.  “It is at best but a guess,” he wrote to Ball, after a year’s pondering, “and the world attaches wisdom to him that guesses right.”  Yet his conclusions, however reached, though subject to temporary variations, were in the main correct.  Strongly impressed though he was with the importance and exposure of Egypt, he inclined upon the whole to the belief that the French were bound to the westward, out of the Straits and into the Atlantic.  This confirmed him in taking his general summer rendezvous to the westward, where he was to windward of such a movement, as well as interposed between Toulon and any Spanish fleet attempting to go there.  “My station to the westward of Toulon, an unusual one,” he writes to Addington in August, 1803, “has been taken upon an idea that the French fleet is bound out of the Straits and probably to Ireland.  I shall follow them to the Antipodes.”  Two months later he says:  “Plausible reasons may certainly be given for every one of the plans” suggested by his various correspondents; but he thinks that either Alexandria or outside the Mediterranean is the most probable.  “To those two points my whole attention is turned.”  “Their destination, is it Ireland or the Levant?  That is what I want to know;” but in December he still holds to his first impression:  “My opinion is, certainly, out of the Mediterranean.”

In this perplexity Elliot suggested to him to receive on board the fleet some good Frenchmen, who could land from time to time and get information in Toulon,—­a proposition which drew from Nelson a characteristic and amusing explosion.  “Mr. Elliot wanted to send me some good Frenchmen, to go ashore and get me information.  My answer to all these offers is ‘No.’  I can be told nothing of any consequence to me; but a copy of the French admiral’s orders, when he is to put to sea, and where he is destined to, is the only useful information I can care about.  I can see the number and force at Toulon any day I please, and as for the names of the Captains or Admirals I care not what they are called; therefore, as you may suppose, I have none of these ’good Frenchmen’ about me.”  “I put no confidence in them,” he tells Elliot.  “You think yours good:  the Queen thinks hers the same:  I believe they are all alike.  Whatever information you can get me, I shall be very thankful for; but not a Frenchman comes here.  Forgive me, but my mother hated the French.”  “I never trust a Corsican or a Frenchman.  I would give the devil ALL the good ones to take the remainder.”