The salary at Crete, which had been $1500 during the war, was reduced to $1000 at its close, and in future I had only that and what my pen might bring me.

Arrived at Florence on our way to Ancona, we found the Italian government being installed there; and our minister to Italy, Mr.
Marsh, knowing my circumstances, insisted on my taking a thousand francs, though his own salary, which was, as in my case, his only income, was always insufficient for his official and social position at the capital.

I accepted it, and it was ten years before I paid it all back.
Looking back on this period of my life from a later and relatively assured, though never prosperous condition, I can see that most of my straits in life have been owing to my having accepted the miserable and delusive advantage of an official position under my government.

I was not indolent, and asked for an appointment not to escape work, but to be put in the way of work which I wanted to do; and when I was disappointed in the appointment to Venice I should have set to work at home.

But my position was a difficult one.