e 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?"

"A few weeks ago, and you would have said: 'What is life even with
them?'"

"Then you really think I am better?" he smiled.

"I'm sure of it."

"As for me," he returned, "I confess it. That has happened which I
thought never would happen. I am once more interested in life. The
wish to live has come back. I am glad to be alive. Carl, your first
case has been a success."

"No thanks to me," I said. "Beyond seeing that you didn't displace the
broken pieces of your thigh-bone, what have I done? Nothing. No one
knows that better than you do."

"That's your modesty--your incurable modesty."

I shook my head, and went to stand by his couch. I was profoundly
aware then, despite all the efforts of my self-co