fter being much worried by the Puritan party. They travelled by way of
Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Milan, the Lago Maggiore, the Simplon Pass,
Sion, and St. Maurice to Geneva. Here again Evelyn became sick nigh unto
death, from small-pox contracted at Beveretta, the night before reaching
Geneva. 'Being extremely weary and complaining of my head, and finding
little accommodation in the house, I caus'd one of our hostesses
daughters to be removed out of her bed and went immediately into it
whilst it was yet warme, being so heavy with pain and drowsinesse that I
would not stay to have the sheets chang'd; but I shortly after payd
dearly for my impatience, falling sick of the small-pox so soon as I
came to Geneva, for by the smell of frankincense and ye tale of ye good
woman told me of her daughter having had an ague, I afterwards concluded
she had been newly recovered of the small-pox.' Becoming very ill he was
bled of the physician 'a very learned old man..... He afterwards
acknowledg'd that he should not have bled me had he suspected ye
small-pox, which brake out a day after.' As nurse he had a Swiss matron
afflicted with goitre, 'whose monstrous throat, when I sometimes awak'd
out of unquiet slumbers, would affright me.' But again he was spared for
the work he was destined to do. 'By God's mercy after five weeks keeping
my chamber I went abroad.'

Leaving Geneva on the 5th July 1646, Evelyn's party went by way of
Lyons, La Charite, and Orleans to Paris, arriving 'rejoic'd that after
so many disasters and accidents in a tedious peregrination, I was gotten
so neere home, and here I resolv'd to rest myselfe before I went
further. It was now October, and the onely time that in my whole life I
spent most idly, tempted from my more profitable recesses; but I soon
recover'd my better resolutions and fell to my study, learning the High
Dutch and Spanish tongues, and now and then refreshing my danceing, and
such exercises as I had long omitted, and which are not in much
reputation amongst the sober Italians.'

During the course of the following winter and spring he saw much of 'Sir
Richard Browne, his Majesty's Resident at the Court of France, and with
whose lady and family I had contracted a greate friendship (and
particularly set my affections on a daughter).' To this young girl,
Mary, the only child of Sir Richard Browne by a daughter of Sir John
Pretyman, he was married on 27th June, 1647, by Dr. Earle, chaplain to
the young C