It seems to have been at this time that Lady Burton prevailed upon her husband to range himself nominally among the Catholics.  “About a year before her death,” Mr. T. Douglas Murray writes to me, “Lady Burton showed me a paper of considerable length, all of it in Sir R. Burton’s writing and signed by himself, in which he declared that he had lived and would die a Catholic, adhering to all the rites and usages of the Church."[FN#615] Curiously enough, while bringing forward all the evidence she could adduce to prove that Burton was a Christian, Lady Burton makes no reference in her book to this paper.  Perhaps it was because Sir Richard continued to gibe at the practices of her church just as much after his “conversion” as before.  However, it gratified her to know that if he was not a good Catholic, he was, at any rate, the next best thing—­a Catholic.  An intimate friend of Burton to whom I mentioned this circumstance observed to me, “I am sure, that Burton never in any way accepted the idea of a personal God; but, rather than be perpetually importuned and worried, he may have pretended to give in to Lady Burton, as one does to a troublesome child.”

Lady Burton tells us that during the last few years of his life he used to lock the outer doors of his house twice a day and then engage in private prayer; on the other hand, friends of Burton who knew him and were with him almost to the last have received this statement with skepticism.

Lady Burton’s happiness was further increased by the present of a very beautiful oil painting representing the Virgin Mary, done by Miss Emily Baker, Dr. Baker’s sister.  It was generally known by the Burtons, from the colour of its drapery, as “the Blue Madonna."[FN#616]

167.  Visit of Arbuthnot, Last Letter to Mr. Payne, May 1890.

On May 11th Mr. Arbuthnot paid a second visit to Trieste, and the pleasure that the vent gave to Sir Richard is reflected in a letter to Mr. Payne written the same month.  “At last!” he says, “Arbuthnot has brought the volume [Payne’s Alaeddin] and the Ms. [Zotenberg’s Ms. of Zayn al-Asnam which Burton had lent to Mr. Payne].”  He then goes on to say that he has kicked up “an awful shindy with the Athenaeum Club,” about something, just as if he had not been kicking up awful shindies with all sorts of people ever since his schoolboy days at Tours.  “I am delighted,” he goes on, “with the volume [Payne’s Alaeddin] and especially with the ascription,[FN#617] so grateful in its friendly tone.  I have read every word with the utmost pleasure.  We might agree to differ about Cazotte.[FN#618] I think you are applying to 1750 the moralities of 1890.  Arbuthnot’s visit has quite set me up, like a whiff of London in the Pontine marshes of Trieste.  He goes to-day, d——­ the luck! but leaves us hopes of meeting during the summer in Switzerland or thereabouts.  He is looking the picture of health and we shall return him to town undamaged.  Best of good fortune to Bandello."[FN#619]