"So will you be when you have lived here three months," answered the physician.
"You believe then in the treatment?" asked the patient somewhat less sceptically than before.
"I believe in the inexhaustible power of nature to heal the sickness of civilisation," he answered. "Do you feel strong enough to hear a good piece of news?" he continued, watching his patient closely.
"Quite, doctor!"
"Well then, peace has been made!"
"God! What a happiness!" the patient burst out.
"Yes certainly," said the doctor; "but don't ask more, for you cannot hear more to-day. Come out now, but be prepared for one thing. Your recovery will not be so rapid as you think. You may have relapses. Memory, you see, is our worst enemy,—but come with me now."
The doctor took his patient's arm and led him into the garden. There were no railings and no walls to bar one's passage, but only green hedges, which conducted the wanderer back by labyrinthine paths to his starting-point; but behind the hedges were deep trenches which were impossible to cross.
The lieutenant sought for familiar phrases with which to express his delight, but he felt that they were so inadequate that he resolved to be silent, listening to a wonderful soundless nerve music. He felt as though all the strings of his soul were being tuned again, and he experienced a calm such as he had not felt for a very long time.
"Do you doubt whether I am recovered?" he asked the doctor with a melancholy smile.