HKB
STRASBOURG, October 1540. When your letter was first brought to me I could scarcely lift a finger, on account of bodily weakness, and therefore reply to yours somewhat later than I ought. Since that time to the present such has been my state of doubt and hesitation, that it was impossible for me to write any thing for certain; it seemed, indeed, as if it had been so ordered on purpose that our wedlock[221] might not be over joyous, that we might not exceed all bounds, that the Lord thus thwarted our joy by moderating it. On the 3d of September I was seized with stuffing of the head, a malady so frequent with me that it gave me no great concern. Next day, being the Lord's-day, when I had got a little warm in the delivery of the forenoon sermon, I felt those humours which had gathered in the head begin to loosen and dissolve. Before I could leave the place the cough attacked me, and I was very much troubled with the continual defluxion until the Tuesday. On that day, when I was preaching, as usual, and found great difficulty in speaking, owing to the nostrils being blocked up with mucus and the fauces choked with hoarseness, all of a sudden I underwent a strange sensation; the cough, to be sure, ceased, but rather unseasonably, while the head continued to be crammed with evil humours. On the Monday a circumstance occurred which had provoked my anger; for when the housekeeper, as oft she does, spoke more freely than became her, and had addressed some rude expression to my brother, he could not brook her impertinence; not, however, that he made any stir about it, but he silently left the house, and vowed solemnly that he would not return so long as she remained with me. Therefore, when she saw me so sad on account of my brother's departure, she also went elsewhere. Her son, in the meanwhile, continued to live with me. I am wont, however, when heated by anger, or stirred up by some greater anxiety than usual, to eat to excess, and to devour my meat more eagerly than I ought, which so happened to me at that time. Whenever the stomach is oppressed overnight with too much, or with unsuitable food, I am tormented in the morning with severe indigestion. To correct that by fasting was a ready cure, and that was my usual practice; but in order that the son of our housekeeper might not interpret this abstinence to be an indirect way of getting rid of him, I rather chose, at the expense of health, not to incur that offence. On Tuesday thereafter, when the cough, as I have already mentioned, had ceased, about nine o'clock, after supper, I was seized with a fainting fit. I went to bed; then followed severe paroxysm, intense burning heat, a strange swimming of the head. When I got up on Wednesday, I felt so feeble in every limb and member, that I was at length forced to acknowledge that I was labouring under severe illness.