He
had had a fever, and then he had had a chill; the pendulum had swung
right and left in a manner rather trying to the machine; but now, at
last, it was working back to an even, natural beat. He recovered in a
measure the generous eloquence with which he had fanned his flame at
Homburg, and talked about things with something of the same passionate
freshness. One day when I was laid up at the inn at Bruges with a lame
foot, he came home and treated me to a rhapsody about a certain
meek-faced virgin of Hans Memling, which seemed to me sounder sense than
his compliments to Madame Blumenthal. He had his dull days and his
sombre moods--hours of irresistible retrospect; but I let them come and
go without remonstrance, because I fancied they always left him a trifle
more alert and resolute. One evening, however, he sat hanging his head
in so doleful a fashion that I took the bull by the horns and told him he
had by this time surely paid his debt to penitence, and that he owed it
to himself to banish that woman for ever from his thoughts.
He looked up, staring; and then with a deep blush--"That woman?" he said.
"I was not thinking of Madame Blumenthal!"
After this I gave another construction to his melancholy. Taking him
with his hopes and fears, at the end of six weeks of active observation
and keen sensation, Pickering was as fine a fellow as need be.
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