"Very. And now I will light myself a cigarette, and you will no more talk.
As an old soldier, I know that it is bad for a _caballero_ with a broken
head to talk so much as you are doing."

"As a surgeon, I know you are right, and I will talk no more for the
present."

And then, feeling rather drowsy, I composed myself to sleep. The last
thing I remembered before closing my eyes was the long, swarthy,
quixotic-looking face of my singular nurse, veiled in a blue cloud of
cigarette-smoke, which, as it rolled from the nostrils of his big,
aquiline nose, made those orifices look like the twin craters of an active
volcano, upside down.

When, after a short snooze, I woke a second time, my first sensation was
one of intense surprise, and being unable, without considerable
inconvenience, to rub my eyes, I winked several times in succession to
make sure that I was not dreaming; for while I slept the swart visage,
black eyes, and grizzled mustache of my nurse had, to all appearance, been
turned into a fair countenance, with blue eyes and a tawny head, while the
tiny cigarette had become a big meerschaum pipe.

"God bless me! You are surely not Ramon?" I exclaimed.

"No; I am Geist. It is my turn of duty as your nurse. Can I get you
anything?"

"Thank you very much; you are all very kind. I feel rather faint, and
perhaps if I had something to eat it might do me good."