MARRIAGE. 141 



to Paris, where my brothers William and Charles also 

 just then happened to be. After the years passed in 

 anxiety and severe work I there enjoyed in full measure 

 my young married happiness, enhanced by the familiar 

 intercourse with the brothers. The sorrowful years 

 by the sick couch of her beloved sister had much 

 tried my wife. All the more delightful was it to me 

 to perceive how the new happiness from day to day 

 restored her earlier youthful freshness. That made me 

 also young again, and obliterated the traces of ex- 

 cessive labour and prolonged sickness. 



Alas this sunshine in my life did not last Ion 



Soon after her second confinement Matilda began to 



o 



ail. The germs of the terrible disease of which her 

 sister had died, and which she had probably received 

 during the long self-sacrificing period of nursing, now 

 began to mature. A year and a half's residence in 

 Ixeichenhall, Me ran, and other spas appeared to have 

 restored her, but it was not for long. After a union 

 of thirteen years, in which she bore me two sons 

 and two daughters, she died after long and painful 

 suffering. 



When in the spring of 1853 the construction of 

 a railway telegraph from Warsaw to the Prussian 

 frontier was entrusted to us, we made my brother 

 Charles, who had returned to London at the beginning 

 of that year after the shipwreck of our Paris plans, 

 the offer to undertake the direction both of this con- 

 struction and also of the further expected works in 

 Russia. Charles declared himself ready, and subse- 



