and the bird and the dog should go along too.

By the time Fontainebleau was reached they had planned trips through all
the canals of Europe. The idea took the artists' fancy also, and a group
of them actually purchased a canal-boat called _The Eleven Thousand
Virgins of Cologne_. Furnishing a water villa, however, was more
expensive than they had foreseen, and she came to a sad end. "'The
Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne' rotted in the stream where she was
beautified ... she was never harnessed to the patient track-horse. And
when at length she was sold, by the indignant carpenter of Moret, there
was sold along with her the _Arethusa_ and the _Cigarette_ ... now these
historic vessels fly the tricolor and are known by new and alien names."

In 1873 Stevenson planned to try for admission to the English bar
instead of the Scottish and went to London to take the examination. But
his health, which had been rather poor, became worse, and on reaching
London the doctor ordered him to Mentone in the south of France, where
he had been before as a boy.

There he spent his days principally lying on his back in the sun reading
and playing with a little Russian girl with whom he struck up a great
friendship. His letters to his mother were full of her sayings and
doings. He was too ill to write much, although one essay, "Ordered
South," was the outcome of this trip, the only piece of writing in which
he ever posed as an invalid or talked of his ill health.

At the end of two months he improved enough to return to Edinburgh, but
gave up the idea of the English bar. His illness and absence seemed to
have smoothed out some of the difficulties at home, and after he
returned things went happier in every way.