about Lady H. and all that. But it is hard to condemn and use ill a
hero, as he is in his own element, for being foolish about a woman who
has art enough to make fools of many wiser than an admiral." Many
years later, immediately after the parting which he did not then know
was the last, Minto said of him, "He is in many points a really great
man, in others a baby." Nelson himself, conscious of the diligence
which he had used in the administration of his wide command and its
varied interests, put out of court all other considerations of
propriety. "I trust you and all my friends will believe," he told
Spencer, "that mine cannot be an inactive life, although it may not
carry all the outward parade of _much ado about nothing_."

Had the Hamiltons remained in Palermo, Nelson would have been forced
to a choice between leaving her and the Mediterranean, or yielding a
submission to orders which to the last he never gave, when fairly out
of signal distance. But the Foreign Office had decided that Sir
William should not return after the leave for which he had applied;
and in the beginning of March it was known at Palermo that his
successor had been appointed. This Nelson also learned, at the latest,
when he came back there on the 16th. To one correspondent he wrote,
on the 28th, "Most probably my health will force me to retire in
April, for I am worn out with fatigue of body and mind," and his
application was sent in on the 6th of the latter month, after news of
the "Guillaume Tell's" capture. On the 22d Hamilton presented his
letters of recall, and on the 24th he and Lady Hamilton, with a party,
embarked on board the "Foudroyant" for a trip to Syracuse and Malta,
from which they all returned to Palermo on the first of June. Against
this renewed departure Troubridge again remonstrated, in words which
showed that he and others saw, in Nelson's determination to abandon
the field, the results of infatuation rather than of illness. "Your