and found him lying
unconscious in the salon. With endless pains Schmucke raised the
half-dead body and laid it on the bed; but when he came to question
the death-stricken man, and saw the look in the dull eyes and heard the
vague, inarticulate words, the good German, so far from losing his head,
rose to the very heroism of friendship. Man and child as he was, with
the pressure of despair came the inspiration of a mother's tenderness, a
woman's love. He warmed towels (he found towels!), he wrapped them about
Pons' hands, he laid them over the pit of the stomach; he took the cold,
moist forehead in his hands, he summoned back life with a might of will
worthy of Apollonius of Tyana, laying kisses on his friend's eyelids
like some Mary bending over the dead Christ, in a _pieta_ carved in
bas-relief by some great Italian sculptor. The divine effort, the
outpouring of one life into another, the work of mother and of lover,
was crowned with success. In half an hour the warmth revived Pons; he
became himself again, the hues of life returned to his eyes, suspended
faculties gradually resumed their play under the influence of artificial
heat; Schmucke gave him balm-water with a little wine in it; the spirit
of life spread through the body; intelligence lighted up the forehead so
short a while ago insensible as a stone; and Pons knew that he had been
brought back to life, by what sacred devotion, what might of friendship!

"But for you, I should die," he said, and as he spoke he felt the good
German's tears falling on his face. Schmucke was laughing and crying at
once.

Poor Schmucke! he had waited for those words with a frenzy of hope as
costly as the frenzy of despair; and now his strength utterly failed
him, he collapsed like a rent balloon. It was his turn to fall; he
sank into the easy-chair, clasped his hands, and thanked God in fervent
prayer. For him a miracle had just been wrought. He put no belief in the
efficacy of the prayer of his deeds; the miracle had been wrought by God
in direct answer to his cry. And yet that miracle was a natural effect,
such as medical science often records.

A sick man, surrounded by those who love him, nursed by those who wish
earnestly that he should live, will recover (other things being equal),
when another patient tended by hirelings will die. Doctors decline to
see unconscious magnetism in this phenomenon; for them it is the result
of intelligent nursing, of exact obedience to their o