While such thoughts flew past, my ever-rising question to myself was, "Where am I now ?" The vague feeling which illness leaves upon the mind, whispered to me of kind looks and soft voices; and I had a dreamy consciousness about me of being watched and cared for, but wherefore, or by whom, I knew not.
From a partly open door which led into a garden, a mild and balmy air fanned my temples and soothed my heated brow; and as the light curtain waved to and fro with the breeze, the odor of the rose and the orange-tree filled the apartment.
There is something in the feeling of weakness which succeeds to long illness of the most delicious and refined enjoyment.

The spirit emerging as it were from the thraldom of its grosser prison, rises high and triumphant above the meaner thoughts and more petty ambitions of daily life.

Purer feelings, more ennobling hopes succeed; and dreams of our childhood, mingling with our promises for the future, make up an ideal existence in which the low passions and cares of ordinary life enter not or are forgotten.

'Tis then we learn to hold converse with ourselves; 'tis then we ask how has our manhood performed the promises of its youth, or have our ripened prospects borne out the pledges of our boyhood?
'Tis then, in the calm justice of our lonely hearts, we learn how our failures are but another name for our faults, and that what we looked on as the vicissitudes of fortune are but the fruits of our own vices.

Alas, how short-lived are such intervals! Like the fitful sunshine in the wintry sky, they throw one bright and joyous tint over the dark landscape: for a moment the valley and the mountain-top are bathed in a ruddy glow; the leafless tree and the dark moss seem to feel a touch of spring; but the next instant it is past; the lowering clouds and dark shadows intervene, and the cold blast, the moaning wind, and the dreary waste are once more before us.
I endeavored to recall the latest events of my career, but in vain; the real and the visionary were inextricably mingled, and the scenes of my campaigns were blended with hopes and fears and doubts which had no existence save in my dreams.