Count Festetics de Tolna, an Austrian
officer, a very pleasant, simple, boyish creature, with his young wife,
daughter of an American millionaire; he is a friend of our own Captain
Wurmbrand, and it is a great pity Wurmbrand is away.

Glad you saw and liked Lysaght. He has left in our house a most cheerful
and pleasing memory, as a good, pleasant, brisk fellow with good health
and brains, and who enjoys himself and makes other people happy. I am
glad he gave you a good report of our surroundings and way of life; but
I knew he would, for I believe he had a glorious time--and gave one.[78]

I am on fair terms with the two Treaty officials, though all such
intimacies are precarious; with the consuls, I need not say, my position
is deplorable. The President (Herr Emil Schmidt) is a rather dreamy man,
whom I like. Lloyd, Graham and I go to breakfast with him to-morrow; the
next day the whole party of us lunch on the _Curacoa_ and go in the
evening to a _Bierabend_ at Dr. Funk's. We are getting up a paper-chase
for the following week with some of the young German clerks, and have in
view a sort of child's party for grown-up persons with kissing games,
etc., here at Vailima. Such is the gay scene in which we move. Now I
have done something, though not as much as I wanted, to give you an idea
of how we are getting on, and I am keenly conscious that there are other
letters to do before the mail goes.--Yours ever,

R. L. STEVENSON.

TO J. M. BARRIE

_Vailima, July 13, 1894._

MY DEAR BARRIE,--This is the last effort of an ulcerated conscience. I
have been so long owing you a letter, I have heard so much of you, fresh
from the press, from my mother and Graham Balfour, that I have to write
a letter no later than to-day, or perish in my shame. But the deuce of
it is, my dear fellow, that you write such a very good letter that I am
ashamed to exhibit myself before my junior (which you are, after all) in
the light of the dreary idiot I feel. Understand that there will be
nothing funny in the following pages. If I can manage to be rationally
coherent, I shall be more than satisfied.

In the first place, I have had the extreme satisfaction to be shown that
photograph of your mother. It bears evident traces of the hand of an
amateur. How is it that amateurs invariably take better photographs than
professionals? I must qualify invariably. My own negatives have always
represented a province of chaos and old night