God bless you, dear friend. Beg the Professor to accept my affectionate respect, and believe me always yours with love.
_June 3._--Book V. published a week ago. Growing interest in the public, and growing sale, which has from the beginning exceeded that of "Middlemarch;" the Jewish part apparently creating strong interest.
[Sidenote: Letter to J. W. Cross, 3d June, 1876.]
The useful "companion," which your loving care has had marked with my initials, will go with me, and be a constant sign of the giver's precious affection, which you have expressed in words such as I most value.
Even success needs its consolations. Wide effects are rarely other than superficial, and would breed a miserable scepticism about one's work if it were not now and then for an earnest assurance such as you give me that there are lives in which the work has done something "to strengthen the good and mitigate the evil."
I am pursued to the last with some bodily trouble--this week it has been sore throat. But I am emerging, and you may think of me next week as raising my "Ebenezer."
The manuscript of "Daniel Deronda" bears the following inscription:
"Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, * * * * * Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising Haply I think on thee--and then my state Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change my state with kings."
_June 10._--We set off on our journey, intending to go to San Martino Lantosc in the Maritime Alps. But I was ill at Aix, where the heat had become oppressive, and we turned northwards after making a pilgrimage to Les Charmettes--stayed a few days at Lausanne, then at Vevey, where again I was ill; then by Berne and Zurich to Ragatz, where we were both set up sufficiently to enjoy our life. After Ragatz to Heidelberg, the Klönthal, Schaffhausen, St. Blasien in the Black Forest, and then home by Strasburg, Nancy, and Amiens, arriving September 1.
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 6th July, 1876, from Ragatz.]
After much travelling we seem to have reached the right place for our health and comfort, and as we hope to stay here for at least a fortnight, I have begun to entertain selfish thoughts about you and the possibility of having news from you. Our month's absence seems long to us--filled with various scenes and various ailments--but to you, I dare say, the request for a letter to tell us what has happened will seem to have come before there is anything particular to tell.