With a beefsteak an idea would arrive; and with a glass of wine joy entered his heart. His blood, renewed, gave him new feelings. He had again become a man, after the illness in which his youth had been shipwrecked.
Helia, anxious to see him, came back one day. How difficult it had been for her—slave to her profession as she was, and still bound to it for many months! Never mind—she came! Phil was better, Phil was cured. She would have his first smile; he would be her Phil in health as in sickness. But at the gate of the sanatorium a magnificent guardian, adorned with brass buttons and a gilt-banded cap, stopped her. It was society closing its doors to the intrusion of vagabonds. This man of law and order asked Helia why, how, in whose name, by what right, she wished to see Phil, and he refused the favor to her, the mountebank who—had one ever seen the like?—pretended to be his betrothed!
Phil came back to Paris cured. Strength and the daring of courage returned with him. His long rest seemed to have increased his energy tenfold. He went forth from his past as one escapes from a prison, without even looking backward. The young doctor had guessed only too truly: Phil had forgotten many things!
Phil, who had received some unexpected money from his uncle in Virginia, now changed his quartier, and set himself up in better style; and the Salon medal gave him his start. His professor made him acquainted with the Duke of Morgania, who ordered from him the great decorative picture of Morgana. The Comtesse de Donjeon asked his aid for her charity sale.
One effort and then another, and this time Phil would reach the goal. He had one of those happy dispositions which attract luck as the magnet attracts iron filings. He was ready; life was open before him like slack water at sea; there was only wanting to him a good breeze to swell his sail.
From what side was it to blow?
“A magnificent guardian stopped her”