Gerome, like a true Russian,
hunts up a samovar in the village, and consoles himself with
innumerable glasses of
Tea and cigarettes, while the medicine-chest is
brought into requisition, and I bathe the swollen limb unceasingly for
three or four hours with Goulard's extract and water, surrounded by a
ring of admiring and very dirty natives. But my efforts are in vain,
for the following morning the pain is as severe, the leg as swollen as
ever. Gerome is all for applying a blister, which he says will "bring
the poison out"! Another miserable day breaks, and finds me still
helpless. I do not think I ever realized before how slowly time can
pass, for I had not a single book, with the exception of "Propos
d'Exil," by Pierre Loti, and even that delightful work is apt to pall
after three complete perusals in the space of as many weeks. From
sunrise to sunset I lay, prone on my back, staring up at the cobwebby,
smoke-blackened rafters, while the shadows shortened and lengthened in
the bright sunlit yard, the monotonous silence broken only by the deep
regular snores of my companion, whose capacity for sleep was something
marvellous, the clucking of poultry, and the occasional stamp or snort
of a horse in the stable below. Now and again a rat would crawl out,
and, emboldened by the stillness, creep close up to me, darting back
into its hole with a jump and a squeal as I waved it off with hand or
foot.
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