We know of three visits Eliot made to Perigueux - in the winter of 1910/11, his early morning arrival on 9 August 1919, and another visit some ten days later after leaving Pound at the end of their walk from Excideuil to Bourdeilles. Based on Pound's lines in his Canto XXIX - "I am afraid of the life after death" - and what we know of Eliot's state of mind in 1919, it seems appropriate to relate the second episode of "dispossession by the dead" to one of his August 1919 visits.²⁶ Death did surround Eliot in the summer of 1919 and was prominent then in his thoughts, memories and inspiration. Eliot's father had died earlier in the year - on 7 January 1919 - of an unexpected heart attack. Influenza - "Kansas flu," "Spanish flu" - was taking its toll. It is estimated that between 50 million and 100 million people globally died of the epidemics of 1918-19, a period when Eliot is regularly recorded as run-down or unwell, and there are several references to "influenza" in Eliot's letters in the months before he left for France in 1919. The overwhelming slaughter of the Great War was, moreover, less than a year in the past.