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?"