manner that the President might never repent his favouring him with the
use of his house: he gave directions that while he was at Balagni no
butchers meat should be brought to table on Fridays or Saturdays; he
received none of the Dutch refugee Ministers there; no psalms nor hymns
were sung; in fine, he would have no public nor even private exercise of
the Protestant Religion performed; and would see only those whom he
could not decently refuse. From Balagni he sometimes made excursions to
St. Germain, where the court was, in order to cultivate the friendship
of the ministry. Having learnt that the President de Meme wanted to
reside himself at Balagni, he quitted it, and retired to Senlis in the
beginning of August: in October he came back to Paris.

His wife's affairs obliging her to make a journey to Zealand, she set
out for that province in the summer 1624. In her absence Grotius was
seized with a violent dysentery. October 18th, 1624, he writes to his
brother that he had been three weeks confined to his bed, and four times
blooded. The news of his illness threw his wife into a fever. As soon as
it was abated she set out for Paris without waiting the return of her
strength. The pleasure of seeing her again and the care she took of him
wrought a wonderful change in Grotius: in fine, after two months
dangerous illness he began to mend, and in a little time was perfectly
recovered, so that he was never in better health than in the beginning
of the year 1625.

His illness did not hinder his studies: in this last he was employed
about the _Phoenissæ_ of Euripides. A part of his translation of this
Tragedy had been lost when he was a prisoner at the Hague: he did it
over again while confined by his dysentery, and put the last hand to the
whole. It was not published till 1630. He dedicated it to the President
de Meme. The preface confirms that he did this work in prison; that