xxviii INTRODUCTION 



small-pox, which brake out a day after. ' As nurse he had 

 a Swiss matron afflicted with goitre, ' whose monstrous throat, 

 when I sometimes awak'd out of unquiet slumbers, would 

 affright me. ' But again he was spared for the work he was 

 destined to do. * By God's mercy after five weeks keeping 

 my chamber I went abroad. ' 



Leaving Geneva on the 5th July 1646, Evelyn's party 

 went by way of Lyons, La Charite, and Orleans to Paris, 

 arriving * rejoic'd that after so many disasters and accidents 

 in a tedious peregrination, I was gotten so neere home, and 

 here 1 resolv'd to rest myselfe before I went further. It 

 was now October, and the onely time that in my whole life 

 I spent most idly, tempted from my more profitable recesses ; 

 but I soon recover'd my better resolutions and fell to my 

 study, learning the High Dutch and Spanish tongues, and 

 now and then refreshing my danceing, and such exercises as 

 I had long omitted, and which are not in much reputation 

 amongst the sober Italians. ' 



During the course of the following winter and spring he 

 saw much of c Sir Richard Browne, his Majesty's Resident 

 at the Court of France, and with whose lady and family I 

 had contracted a greate friendship (and particularly set my 

 affections on a daughter). ' To this young girl, Mary, the 

 only child of Sir Richard Browne by a daughter of Sir John 

 Pretyman, he was married on 2yth June, 1647, by Dr. Earle, 

 chaplain to the young Charles, then Prince of Wales, who 

 was holding his court at St. Germains. In October he 

 returned by Rouen, Dieppe, and Calais, and got safe to 

 Dover, for which I heartily put up my thanks to God who had 

 conducted me safe to my owne country, and been mercifull 

 to me through so many aberrations ' during a period extending 

 over four years. He returned alone, * leaving my wife, yet 

 very young, under the care of an excellent lady and prudent 

 mother. ' Indeed, she was a mere child, being then not 

 more than twelve years of age, and her father was only 

 Evelyn's senior by fifteen years. 



