The veins in my arm begin to swell visibly; it is a sign of blood-poisoning. This is the finishing stroke. The news spreads among my countrymen, and one evening there comes the kind-hearted woman, whose Christmas dinner I had so abruptly left, who was antipathetic to me, and whom I almost despised. She finds me out, asks how I am, and tells me with tears that the hospital is my only hope.
One can understand how helpless and humiliated I feel, as my eloquent silence shows her that I am penniless. She is seized with sympathy at seeing me so prostrate. Poor herself, and oppressed with daily anxieties, she resolves to make a collection among the Scandinavian colony, and to go to the pastor of the community.
A sinful woman has pity on the man who has deserted his lawful wife!
Once more a beggar, asking for alms by means of a woman, I begin to suspect that there is an invisible hand which guides the irresistible logic of events. I bow before the storm, determined to rise again at the first opportunity.
The carriage brings me to the hospital of St. Louis. On the way, in the Rue de Rennes, I get out in order to buy two white shirts. The winding-sheet for the last hour! I really expect a speedy death, without being able to say why.
In the hospital I am forbidden to go out without leave; besides, my hands are so wrapped up that all occupation is impossible to me; I feel therefore like a prisoner. My room is bare, contains only the most necessary things, and has nothing attractive about it. It lies near the public sitting-room, where from morning to evening they smoke and play cards. The bell rings for breakfast. As I sit down at the table I find myself in a frightful company of death's-heads. Here a nose is wanting, there an eye; there the lips hang down, here the cheek is ulcered. Two of them do not look sick, but show in their faces gloom and despair. These are "kleptomaniacs" of high social rank, who, because of their powerful connections, have escaped prison by being declared irresponsible.
An unpleasant smell of iodoform takes away my appetite. Since my hands are muffled I must ask the help of my neighbour for cutting bread and pouring out wine. Round this banquet of criminals and those condemned to death goes the good Mother, the Superintendent, in her severe black and white dress, and gives each of us his poisonous medicine. With a glass holding arsenic I drink to a death's-head who pledges me in digitalis. That is gruesome, and yet one must be thankful! That makes me wild. To have to be thankful for something so petty and unpleasant!
They dress me, and undress me, and look after me like a child. The kind sister takes a fancy to me, treats me like a baby, calls me "my child," while I call her "mother."
But it does me good to be able to say this word "mother," which has not passed my lips for thirty years. The old lady, an Augustine nun, who wears the garb of the dead, because she has never lived, is mild as resignation itself, and teaches us to smile at our sufferings as though they were joys, for she knows the beneficial effects of pain. She does not utter a word of reproof nor admonition nor sermonising.
She knows the regulations of the ordinary hospitals so well that she can allow small liberties to the patients, though not to herself. She permits me to smoke in my room, and offers to make my cigarettes herself; this, however, I decline. She procures for me permission to go out beyond the regulated limits of time. When she discovers that I am actively interested in chemistry, she takes me to the learned apothecary of the hospital. He lends me books, and invites me, when I acquaint him with my theory of the composite character of so-called simple bodies, to work in his laboratory. This nun has had a great influence on my life. I begin to reconcile myself again to my lot, and value the happy mischance which has brought me under this kindly roof.