S.S. Saint Michel
Off Pantaleria [sic]
1. March.

Tomorrow morning we get to Malta – thus far we came in a really comfortable & luxurious French collier with which we became acquainted at Toulon by the simple process of going to the Admiral and asking for a passage – After that, i.e. Malta, it will be as God pleases – Collier or no, I have never been really comfortable on any ship before, having now a room for a cabin with a large bed honeymoon style & fittings to match – Deedes the skipper and I make up the party, and I wish we were going on to L.

My dear queen of the desert if you were here we would for these two days abjure our antipathy to the sea – There have been so many emotions lately that I am really quite glad to rest & think a little about things to come – I don’t mean heaven quite, but politics and things – If you were here it would be grand – Someday I will take a honeymoon in a French collier.

And at sea ideas come to me. I have now some things shaped in what I am pleased to call my brain. In London I could think of nothing except what I had and had not – mostly and for the time only what I had not. At sea I become again a philosopher – the child’s rage has gone.

And you – how do things go? How does the world seem? What do you do? But you will have gone back to Boulogne & the double index – good luck to it –

Goodnight my dear – and au revoir
Dick.