I had not yet seen him,
gave instructions, commanding Romayne to present himself. Under these
circumstances it was impossible for him to refuse to receive Lady Loring
and myself on a later occasion. I cannot tell you how distressed we were
at the sad change for the worse in his personal appearance. The Italian
physician, whom he occasionally consulted, told me that there was a
weakness in the action of his heart, produced, in the first instance, by
excessive study and the excitement of preaching, and aggravated by the
further drain on his strength due to insufficient nourishment. He
would eat and drink just enough to keep him alive, and no more; and he
persistently refused to try the good influence of rest and change of
scene. My wife, at a later interview with him, when they were alone,
induced him to throw aside the reserve which he had maintained with
me, and discovered another cause for the deterioration in his health.
I don't refer to the return of a nervous misery, from which he has
suffered at intervals for years past; I speak of the effect produced
on his mind by the announcement--made no doubt with best intentions
by Doctor Wybrow--of the birth of his child. This disclosure (he was
entirely ignorant of his wife's situation when he left her) appears to
have affected him far more seriously than the English doctor supposed.
Lady Loring was so shocked at what he said to her on the subject, that
she has only repeated it to me with a certain reserve. 'If I could
believe I did wrong,' he said, 'in dedicating myself to the service of
the Church, after the overthrow of my domestic happiness, I should also
believe that the birth of this child was the retributive punishment of
my sin, and the warning of my approaching death. I dare not take this
view. And yet I have it not in me, after the solemn vows by which I am
bound, to place any more consoling interpretation on an event which,
as a priest, it disturbs and humiliates me even to think of.' That one
revelation of his tone of thought will tell you what is the mental state
of this unhappy man. He gave us little encouragement to continue our
friendly intercourse with him. It was only when we were thinking of our
return to England that we heard of his appointment to the vacant place
of first attache to the Embassy at Paris. The Pope's paternal anxiety on
the subject of Romayne's health had chosen this wise and generous method
of obliging him to try a salutary change of air a