cured a dozen people "with colds
and hemorrhages." His was only a cold--just a cold; that was all. He was
a bit weak sometimes, and what he needed was something to pull up
his strength. The country would do this-plenty of fresh air, riding,
walking, and that sort of thing.

He had left Montreal behind in gay spirits, and he continued gay for
several hours, holding himself' erect in the seat, noting the landscape,
telling stories; but he stumbled with weakness as they got out of the
coach for luncheon. He drank three full portions of whiskey at table,
and ate nothing. The silent landlady who waited on them at last brought
a huge bowl of milk, and set it before him without a word. A flush
passed swiftly across his face and faded away, as, with quick
sensitiveness, he glanced at Nicolas and another passenger, a fat
priest. They took no notice, and, reassured, he said, with a laugh, that
the landlady knew exactly what he wanted. Lifting the dish, he
drained it at a gasp, though the milk almost choked him, and, to the
apprehension of his hostess, set the bowl spinning on the table like
a top. Another illusion of the disease was his: that he succeeded
perfectly in deceiving everybody round him with his pathetic
make-believe; and, unlike most deceivers, he deceived himself as well.
The two actions, inconsistent as they were, were reconciled in him, as
in all the race of consumptives, by some strange chemistry of the mind
and spirit. He was on the broad, undiverging highway to death; yet,
with every final token about him that he was in the enemy's country,
surrounded, trapped, soon to be passed unceremoniously inside the
citadel at the end of the avenue, he kept signalling back to old friends
that all was well, and he told himself that to-morrow the king should
have his own again--"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow!"

He was not very thin in body; his face was full, and at times his eyes
were singularly and fascinatingly bright. He had colour--that hectic
flush which, on his cheek, was almost beautiful. One would have turned
twice to see. The quantities of spirits that he drank (he ate little)
would have killed a half-dozen healthy men. To him it was food, taken
up, absorbed by the fever of his disease, giving him a real, not a
fictitious strength; and so it would continue to do till some artery
burst and choked him, or else, by some miracle of air and climate, the
hole in his lung healed up again; which he, in his elati