"That will cost about a franc," she observed.
"Very likely."
"I think I'll wait."
Next day the pain was worse instead of better. She would give anything
to obtain relief--anything!
"Anything?" I inquired. "Then you had better have a morphia injection. I
have had numbers of them, for the same trouble. The pain will vanish
like magic. There is my friend Dr. Theophile Fornari----"
"I know all about him. He demands five francs a visit, even from poor
people like myself."
"You really cannot expect a busy practitioner to come here and climb
your seventy-two stairs for much less than five francs."
"I think I'll wait. Anyhow, I am not wasting money on food just now, and
that is a consolation."
Now periostitis can hardly be called an amusing complaint, and I would
have purchased a franc's worth of iodine for almost anybody on earth.
Not then. On the contrary, I grew positively low-spirited when, after
three more days, the lamentations began to diminish in volume. They were
sweet music to my ears, at the time. They are sweeter by far, in
retrospect. If only one could extract the same amount of innocent and
durable pleasure out of all other landladies!...
My second joyful memory centres round another thing of beauty--a spiky
agave (miscalled aloe) of monstrous dimensions which may be seen in the
garden of a certain hill-side hotel. Many are the growths of this kind
which I have admired in various lands; none can vaunt as proud and
harmonious a development as this one.
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