The Way of All Flesh
Perhaps it was on account of what the doctor had told me, but I certainly became aware of a feeling I had never experienced before. I mean that I was receiving an influx of new life, or deriving new ways of looking at life—which is the same thing—by the process. I found the doctor quite right in his estimate of the larger mammals as the ones which on the whole were most beneficial, and observed that Ernest, who had heard nothing of what the doctor had said to me, lingered instinctively in front of them. As for the elephants, especially the baby elephant, he seemed to be drinking in large draughts of their lives to the re-creation and regeneration of his own.
We dined in the gardens, and I noticed with pleasure that Ernest's appetite was already improved. Since this time, whenever I have been a little out of sorts myself I have at once gone up to Regent's Park, and have invariably been benefited. I mention this here in the hope that some one or other of my readers may find the hint a useful one.
At the end of his fortnight my hero was much better, more so even than our friend the doctor had expected. "Now," he said, "Mr Pontifex may go abroad, and the sooner the better. Let him stay a couple of months."
This was the first Ernest had heard about his going abroad, and he talked about my not being able to spare him for so long. I soon made this all right.
"It is now the beginning of April," said I, "go down to Marseilles at once, and take steamer to Nice. Then saunter down the Riviera to Genoa—from Genoa go to Florence, Rome and Naples, and come home by way of Venice and the Italian lakes."
"And won't you come too?" said he, eagerly.
I said I did not mind if I did, so we began to make our arrangements next morning, and completed them within a very few days.
365
