Poor Clerval! What must have been his feelings? A meeting, which he
anticipated with such joy, so strangely turned to bitterness. But I
was not the witness of his grief, for I was lifeless and did not
recover my senses for a long, long time.

This was the commencement of a nervous fever which confined me for
several months. During all that time Henry was my only nurse. I
afterwards learned that, knowing my father's advanced age and unfitness
for so long a journey, and how wretched my sickness would make
Elizabeth, he spared them this grief by concealing the extent of my
disorder. He knew that I could not have a more kind and attentive
nurse than himself; and, firm in the hope he felt of my recovery, he
did not doubt that, instead of doing harm, he performed the kindest
action that he could towards them.

But I was in reality very ill, and surely nothing but the unbounded and
unremitting attentions of my friend could have restored me to life.
The form of the monster on whom I had bestowed existence was forever
before my eyes, and I raved incessantly concerning him. Doubtless my
words surprised Henry; he at first believed them to be the wanderings
of my disturbed imagination, but the pertinacity with which I
continually recurred to the same subject persuaded him that my disorder
indeed owed its origin to some uncommon and terrible event.

By very slow degrees, and with frequent relapses that alarmed and
grieved my friend, I recovered. I remember the first time I became
capable of observing outward objects with any kind of pleasure, I
perceived that the fallen leaves had disappeared and that the young
buds were shooting forth from the trees that shaded my window. It was