something no one else knew, no one except his wife. I wondered what was coming, and felt strangely touched and moved at his treating me with such confidence. His manner was so pathetic, and he seemed suddenly to have become weak and helpless, and somehow or other it was in my power to do him a service. I was thrilled and full of expectation.
But, before he began to tell me, he went up to a little cabinet with a glass door and took out a small bottle full of a white powder, bearing the word, the magical word "Majendie"--a word I can never forget as long as I live--and took some of the powder and made a solution and then sucked some of it up with a needle and turned to me. His face was swollen and looked terrible, for the eyes glowed so hotly, and the skin was so red and white in patches. Then he began to open his waistcoat and shirt till his chest was bare. "Look," he said, for I half moved aside, and when I looked I saw he was covered with hundreds of small red sores.
Evidently my face betrayed shrinking and horror, for the old man laughed and said "Oh, I'm not a leper. They're only blisters," and then finding a little clear space on his skin, put the needle of his syringe through the flesh and injected the fluid into his body. He next quickly put his finger over the spot and rubbed to and fro for about a minute, staring steadily at me while he did so.
"That's morphine," he said in a dead voice, "and the rubbing is necessary to prevent a blister forming."
I knew nothing about morphine except the name, and I was disappointed rather than thrilled, but the next minute he gave me all the thrill I wanted, and more besides:
"I've been fighting it for two years," he said quietly in German, still rubbing the spot and staring hard at me, "and I am slowly getting the better of it. If I don't succeed, it means I die." A cold grim smile that made me shudder stole over his swollen face. "Death," he
added.
