He looked at her, with a glance laden with mystery and strength, and answered her in a clear voice:
"I did so: I made the renunciation."
Else was profoundly surprised and trembled all over, questioning him with her beautiful, supplicating eyes.
"Do you know how old I was when I was seized by the chest affection you have?" he asked her, in a cutting voice.
"You? You?"
"At twenty-three I was seized and overthrown by your malady," he continued. "I am from Basle, an old, grey, cold place; but I went to study medicine in Germany, at Heidelberg, and lived there four years in great ardour for study and science, in a dream that absorbed and devoured me. My masters conceived for me the highest hopes. I myself was impetuous, but restrained myself with waiting for some profound scientific mystery that might be revealed to my desire and my tireless discipline of work. One winter evening I was caught on the road by a heavy shower. Next day I had inflammation of the lungs. I spat blood for several days and was dying. With difficulty I was rescued from death, and six months afterwards, at twenty-three, Fräulein von Landau, I had tuberculosis of both lungs. Those who were tending me tried to deceive me; but I was a doctor and knew I must die. Someone told me to come here for six months or a year. Full of fever, still spitting blood, no longer sleeping or taking nourishment, and despairing of everything, I came here. I am forty-eight; for twenty-five years I have been here and I have never left."
"Never at all? Never at all?" she cried, surprised, moved to the depths of her soul.
"Never. Twenty-five years ago the Engadine was an almost deserted region, wild and very sad in some places; fearful and tragic in others. Some modest little inn in the height of summer gave hospitality to a few simple lovers of the mountains, to some invalid or convalescent. There were no conveniences or pleasures or luxury or elegance. Vast solitary horizons, immense meadows whose flowers very few human feet disturbed; mountains unharmed from people's contact, a country with an austere, solitary, and powerful beauty. I lived, so poor was I, in a little rustic cottage belonging to some Engadine peasants. I fed on milk, vegetables, and herbs. I had no one with whom to exchange a word, since even then the healthy and robust fled from those stricken with my terrible disease. I wandered along difficult and rugged paths that no one had tracked; I drank at the icy waters of the springs beneath the glaciers; I gathered the mountain flowers which filled with perfume my little room, and I read a little. In winter my confinement became fearful amidst the snow and ice, shut up at first in my room; then mad with weariness, boredom, and gloom I sallied forth, in the cruel cold, every day on the snow and ice. After a year my malady was conquered. The pure, cold air, the pure water, a life of simplicity and purity, an isolation that pacifies and soothes, an interior life profound and free, the treasures that the high mountains jealously preserve, that are spread out only to humble and devout seekers after health, silence and peace—those treasures were granted me and I was saved. I never left the Engadine again: I made the renunciation."
She listened to him, silent and moved, her eyes clouded with tears.