Your English doctors had told you you were going
to die. That an operation would be fatal--so your good friend
Madame Brandt informed us--but we--_nous autres Francais_--are more
enterprising. Kill or cure. We performed the operation--we didn't kill
you--and here you are--cured."
My heart sickened with a horrible foreboding. A clamminess, such as
others feel at the approach of death, spread over my brow and neck.
"Good God!" I cried, "you are not trying to tell me that I'm going to
live?"
"Why, of course I am!" he exclaimed, brutally delighted. "If nothing
else kills you, you'll live to be a hundred."
"Oh, damn!" said I. "Oh, damn! Oh, damn!" and the tears of physical
weakness poured down my cheeks.
"_Ce sont des droles de gens, les Anglais_!" I heard him whisper to the
nurse before he left the room.
Belonging to a queer folk or not, I found the prospect more and more
dismally appalling according as my mind regained its clarity. It was the
most overwhelming, piteous disappointment I have ever experienced in my
life.
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