Then the moment had come when Alresca's thigh was so far mended that,

under special conditions, we could travel, and one evening, after a

journey full of responsibilities for me, we had arrived in Bruges.

Soon afterwards came a slight alteration.

Alresca took pleasure in his lovely house, and I was aware of an

improvement in his condition. The torpor was leaving him, and his

spirits grew livelier. Unfortunately, it was difficult to give him

outdoor exercise, since the roughly paved streets made driving

impossible for him, and he was far from being able to walk. After a

time I contrived to hire a large rowing boat, and on fine afternoons

it was our custom to lower him from the quay among the swans into this

somewhat unwieldy craft, so that he might take the air as a Venetian.

The idea tickled him, and our progress along the disused canals was

always a matter of interest to the towns-people, who showed an

unappeasable inquisitiveness concerning their renowned fellow

citizen.

It was plain to me that he was recovering; that he had lifted himself

out of the circle of that strange influence under which he had nearly

parted with his life. The fact was plain to me, but the explanation of

the fact was not plain. I was as much puzzled by his rise as I had

been puzzled by his descent. But that did not prevent me from trying

to persuade myself that this felicitous change in my patient's state

must be due, after all, to the results of careful dieting, a proper

curriculum of daily existence, supervision of mental tricks and

habits--in short, of all that minute care and solicitude which only a

resident doctor can give to a sick man.

One evening he was especially alert and gay, and I not less so. We

were in the immense drawing-room, which, like the dining-room,

overlooked the canal. Dinner was finished--we dined at six, the Bruges

hour--and Alresca lay on his invalid's couch, ejecting from his mouth

rings of the fine blue smoke of a Javanese cigar, a box of which I had

found at the tobacco shop kept by two sisters at the corner of the

Grande Place. I stood at the great central window, which was wide

open, and watched the whiteness of the swans moving vaguely over the

surface of the canal in the oncoming twilight. The air was warm and

heavy, and the long, high-pitched whine of the mosquito swarms--sole

pest of the city--had already begun.

"Alresca," I said, "your days as an invalid are numbered."

"Why do you say that?"

"No one who was really an invalid could possibly enjoy that cigar as

you are enjoying it."

"A good cigar--a glass of good wine," he murmured, savoring the

perfume of the cigar. "What would life be without them?"




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