Toulouse, however, he was in
any case resolved to quit. He should not, he said, be tempted to spend
another winter there. It did not suit his health, as he had hoped: he
complained that it was too moist, and that he could not keep clear of
ague. In June, 1763, he quitted it finally for Bagneres; whence after
a short, and, as we subsequently learn, a disappointed, sojourn, he
passed on to Marseilles, and later to Aix, for both of which places
he expressed dislike; and by October he had gone again into winter
quarters at Montpellier, where "my wife and daughter," he writes,
"purpose to stay at least a year behind me." His own intention was to
set out in February for England, "where my heart has been fled these
six months." Here again, however, there are traces of that periodic,
or rather, perhaps, that chronic conflict of inclination between
himself and Mrs. Sterne, of which he speaks with such a tell-tale
affectation of philosophy. "My wife," he writes in January, "returns
to Toulouse, and proposes to spend the summer at Bagneres. I, on the
contrary, go to visit my wife the church in Yorkshire. We all live the
longer, at least the happier, for having things our own way.
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