However, about the leave.  Am I to do anything or nothing?  I am dying to get back to steady occupation and English food, and the sort of regimen one can maintain in one’s own house.  On the other hand, I stand in fear of the bitter cold of February and early March, and still more of the thousand and one worries of London outside one’s work.  So I suppose it will be better if I keep away till Easter, or at any rate to the end of March.  But I must hear something definite from the Home Office.  I have written to Donnelly to the same effect.  My poor Marian’s relapse did not do us any good, for all that I expected it.  However the last accounts are very favourable.

I wrote to Evans the other day about a re-arrangement of the duties of the Secretary and Assistant Secretary.  I thought it was better to write to him than to you on that subject, and I begged him to discuss the matter with the officers.  It is quite absurd that Stokes and you should waste your time in press drudgery.

We are very prudent here, and the climate suits us both, especially my wife, who is so vigorous that I depute her to go and see the Palazzi, and tell me all about them when she comes back.  Old Rome is endlessly interesting to me, and I can always potter about and find occupation.  I think I shall turn antiquary—­it’s just the occupation for a decayed naturalist, though you need not tell the Treasure I say so.

With our love to Mrs. Foster and yourself.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

Hotel Victoria, Via dei due Macelli, January 18, 1885.

My dear Donnelly,

Official sentence of exile for two months more (up to May 12) arrived yesterday.  So if my lords will be so kind as to concur I shall be able to disport myself with a clear conscience.  I hope their lordships won’t think that I am taking things too easy in not making a regular application, and I will do so if you think it better.  But if it had rested with me I think I should have got back in February and taken my chance.  That energetic woman that owns me, and Michael Foster, however, have taken the game out of my hands, and I have nothing to do but to submit.

On the whole I feel it is wise.  I shall have more chance if I escape not only the cold but the bother of London for a couple of months more.

I was very bad a week ago, but I have taken to dosing myself with quinine, and either that or something else has given me a spurt for the last two days, so that I have been more myself than any time since I left, and begin to think that there is life in the old dog yet.  If one could only have some fine weather!  To-day there is the first real sunshine we have been favoured with for a week.