ch I have in
hand.... A year, however, has now been lost to me, and a precious
year, at my time of life. The 'Life of Washington,' and indeed all my
literary tasks, have remained suspended; and my pen has remained idle,
excepting now and then in writing a dispatch to Government, or
scrawling a letter to my family. In the mean time the income which I
used to derive from farming out my writings has died away, and my
moneyed investments yield scarce any interest.... However, thank God,
my health and with it my capacity for work are returning. I shall soon
again have pen in hand, and hope to get two or three good years of
literary labor out of myself."

After his return to Spain he was again laid by. He was disappointed,
but not discouraged, for the self-pity of the invalid never deprived
him of his strong man's humor. "When I drive out and notice the
opening of spring, I feel sometimes almost moved to tears at the
thought that in a little while I shall again have the use of my
limbs, and be able to ramble about and enjoy these green fields and
meadows. It seems almost too great a privilege. I am afraid when I
once more sally forth and walk the streets, I shall feel like a boy
with a new coat, who thinks everybody will turn around to look at him.
'Bless my soul, how that gentleman has the use of his legs!'" A few
days after this was written, he got word that one of his friends had
just undergone a successful surgical operation. "God bless these
surgeons and dentists!" he exclaims. "May their good deeds be returned
upon them a thousand fold! May they have the felicity, in the next
world, to have successful operations performed upon them to all
eternity!"

By this time he had come to take Spanish politics rather too
seriously. The insincerity and profligacy of the Spanish character,
the corruption of the court and state, fairly sicken him: "The last
ten or twelve years of my life," he writes, "have shown me so much of
the dark side of human nature, that I begin to have painful doubts of
my fellow men, and look back with regret to the confiding period of my
literary career, when, poor as a rat, but rich in dreams, I beheld the
world through the medium of my imagination, and was apt to believe men
as good as I wished them to be." His sense of responsibility for the
young queen oppressed him, and he looked forward impatiently to the
hour of his release.

A year later he had gained far better health and spirits. On his
sixty