“None of the inhabitants visited me, which makes me think they are all in his interests; besides, they speak of him very favourably, as well as of his son.  The king sent for Joachim yesterday, and asked him why I did not lodge with him, adding that my presence would soon cure him, and asked me also with what object I had come:  if it were to be reconciled with him; if you were here; if I had taken Paris and Gilbert as secretaries, and if I were still resolved to dismiss Joseph?  I do not know who has given him such accurate information.  There is nothing, down to the marriage of Sebastian, with which he has not made himself acquainted.  I have asked him the meaning of one of his letters, in which he complains of the cruelty of certain people.  He replied that he was—­stricken, but that my presence caused him so much joy that he thought he should die of it.  He reproached me several times for being dreamy; I left him to go to supper; he begged me to return:  I went back.  Then he told me the story of his illness, and that he wished to make a will leaving me everything, adding that I was a little the cause of his trouble, and that he attributed it to my coldness.  ‘You ask me,’ added he, ’who are the people of whom I complain:  it is of you, cruel one, of you, whom I have never been able to appease by my tears and my repentance.  I know that I have offended you, but not on the matter that you reproach me with:  I have also offended some of your subjects, but that you have forgiven me.  I am young, and you say that I always relapse into my faults; but cannot a young man like me, destitute of experience, gain it also, break his promises, repent directly, and in time improve?  If you will forgive me yet once more, I will promise to offend you never again.  All the favour I ask of you is that we should live together like husband and wife, to have but one bed and one board:  if you are inflexible, I shall never rise again from here.  I entreat you, tell me your decision:  God alone knows what I suffer, and that because I occupy myself with you only, because I love and adore only you.  If I have offended you sometimes, you must bear the reproach; for when someone offends me, if it were granted me to complain to you, I should not confide my griefs to others; but when we are on bad terms, I am obliged to keep them to myself, and that maddens me.’

“He then urged me strongly to stay with him and lodge in his house; but I excused myself, and replied that he ought to be purged, and that he could not be, conveniently, at Glasgow; then he told me that he knew I had brought a letter for him, but that he would have preferred to make the journey with me.  He believed, I think, that I meant to send him to some prison:  I replied that I should take him to Craigmiller, that he would find doctors there, that I should remain near him, and that we should be within reach of seeing my son.  He has answered that he will go where I wish to take him, provided that I grant him what he has asked.  He does not, however, wish to be seen by anyone.