but his fourteen years spent in Italy seem to have influenced the
Ministers to pardon him in 1867. While in England (I do not know if he
suffered from it elsewhere) he became a martyr to _tic douleureux_, that
most trying form of facial neuralgia which attacks in such paroxysms of
severe pain--attacks which seem brought on by the most trivial reasons,
such as a knock at the door or by a sudden shake to the chair on which the
patient is sitting, and which, as a rule, give no warning of their
approach.


"My dear Nicholson,

"You remember that you kindly furnished me with your prescription for _tic
douleureux_ to give to my friend Pulszky. He told me a few days back that
he sent it (I think a year ago) to the poor girl at Ventnor who was a
horrible sufferer from it, and heard no more of it until this autumn when
he was at Ventnor again. He was delighted to find she had been immediately
cured by it, had had no returns, was made competent for work, and is in a
servant's place. On my naming this, I have two urgent applications for the
prescriptions. If you will a second time take the trouble to copy out the
prescription I will keep it myself, and give copies to my friends without
further coming upon you.... I have ventured to assert that the Nicholson
who is so talked of as promoting the ballot in Australia is _not_ your
brother Mark.

"Do you know, when I saw in the _Illustrated London News_ the face of the
late lamented Brigadier Nicholson of the Punjaub, I thought it _very_ like
you. Is he possibly a distant relative?

"Ever yours heartily,