ut much labor and
a considerable mental effort. It was a short journey, to be sure, but
I was walking with sprained ankles. It was, however, a great joy and a
great triumph to me to accomplish even this much. It was the recognition
to myself that I was once more on the road to health, and again to feel
the sympathies that make a brotherhood of this life of ours; and so
happy was I with the prospect, that when I went to sleep at night my
last thought was of the pleasure that morning would bring me. And I
was not disappointed; the next day, and the next, and several more that
followed, were all passed in a calm and tranquil enjoyment Looking back
upon this period, I have often been disposed to imagine that when we lie
in the convalescence that follows some severe illness, with no demands
upon our bodily strength, no call made upon our muscular energies, the
very activity of digestion not evoked, as our nourishment is of
the simplest and lightest, our brain must of necessity exercise its
functions more freely, untrammelled by passing cares or the worries
incident to daily life, and that at such times our intellect has
probably a more uncontested action than at any other period of our
existence. I do not want to pursue my theory, or endeavor to sustain
it; my reader has here enough to induce him to join his experience to my
own, or reject the notion altogether.

I lay thus, not impatiently, for above a fortnight. I regained strength
very slowly; the least effort or exertion was sure to overcome me. But
I wished for none; and as I lay there, gazing for whole days long at
a great coat-of-arms over the end of the gallery, where a huge
double-headed eagle seemed to me screaming in the agony of
strangulation, but yet never to be choked outright, I revelled in many
a strange rambling as to the fate of the land of which it was the emblem
and the shield. Doubtless some remnant of my passionate assault on
Austria lingered in my brain, and gave this turn to its operations.

My nurse was one of that sisterhood whose charities call down many a
blessing on the Church that organizes their benevolences. She was what
is called a _graue Schwester_; and of a truth she seemed the incarnation
of grayness. It was not her dress alone, but her face and hands, her
noiseless gait, her undemonstrative stare, her half-husky whisper, and
her monotonous ways, had all a sort of pervading grayness that enveloped
her, just as a cloud mist wraps a landsca