tiness had full
swing in Nelson at this time; at some fancied neglect, he wrote
Troubridge a letter which reduced that gallant officer to tears.

Between Palermo and Malta Keith had received letters from General
Melas, commanding the Austrian army in Piedmont, giving the plan of
the approaching campaign, in which, as the Austrians were to besiege
Genoa, and advance to the Riviera, much depended upon naval
co-operation. Rightly judging that to be the quarter calling for the
naval commander-in-chief, he was anxious to get away. On the 24th of
February he issued an order to Nelson to take charge of the blockade,
and "to adopt and prosecute the necessary measures for contributing to
the complete reduction of Malta." Short of the chief command, which he
coveted and grudged, Nelson himself could not have contrived a
position better fitted to crown his work in the Mediterranean. Within
the harbor of La Valetta, concentrating there the two objects that yet
remained to be attained,--- Valetta itself being one,--was the
"Guillaume Tell," the thirteenth ship, which alone was lacking now to
complete the tale of the trophies of the Nile. Yet the fair prospect
of success, inevitable since the capture of the "Genereux" had
destroyed the French hopes of relief, brought to Nelson nothing but
dismay. "My Lord," he replied the same day, "my state of health is
such, that it is impossible I can much longer remain here. Without
some rest, I am gone. I must, therefore, whenever I find the service
will admit of it, request your permission to go to my friends, at
Palermo, for a few weeks, and leave the command here to Commodore
Troubridge. Nothing but absolute necessity obliges me to write this
letter." "I could no more stay fourteen days longer here, than
fourteen years," he said in a private letter to Keith of the same
date.

By the next day he had recognized that even he could not leave at once
the task appointed him, without discredit. "My situation," he then
wrote to Hamilton, "is to me very irksome, but how at this moment to
get rid of it is a great difficulty. The French ships here ["Guillaume
Tell" and others] are preparing for sea; the Brest fleet, Lord Keith
says, may be daily expected, and with all this I am very unwell....
The first moment which offers with credit to myself I shall assuredly
give you my company.... Lord Keith is commander-in-chief, and I have
not been kindly treated." His tried friends, Troubridge and Ball,
reali