for her kind heart and benevolent stupidity. Her mother tended me with
all the politeness I should have met with in the best families. The
worthy woman treated me like a mother, and called me "son" as she
attended to my wounds. The name sounded pleasantly in my ears, and did no
little towards my cure by the sentiments it awoke in my breast. If I had
been less taken up with the position I was in I should have repaid her
care with some evident marks of the gratitude I felt, but the place I was
in and the part I was playing made the situation too serious a one for me
to think of anything else.

This kindly woman, after looking at my knees and my thighs, told me that
I must make my mind to suffer a little pain, but I might be sure of being
cured by the morning. All I had to do was to bear the application of
medicated linen to my wounds, and not to stir till the next day. I
promised to bear the pain patiently, and to do exactly as she told me.

I was given an excellent supper, and I ate and drank with good appetite.
I then gave myself up to treatment, and fell asleep whilst my nurse was
attending to me. I suppose she undressed me as she would a child, but I
remembered nothing about it when I woke up--I was, in fact, totally
unconscious. Though I had made a good supper I had only done so to
satisfy my craving for food and to regain my strength, and sleep came to
me with an irresistible force, as my physical exhaustion did not leave me
the power of arguing myself out of it. I took my supper at six o'clock in
the evening, and I heard six striking as I awoke. I seemed to have been
enchanted. Rousing myself up and gathering my wits together, I first took
off the linen bandages, and I was astonished to find my wounds healed and
quite free from pain. I did my hair, dressed myself in less than five
minutes, and finding the door of my room open I went downstairs, crossed
the court, and left the house behind me, without appearing to notice two