The solitudes of those great forests were like a wonderful balm.

So the fevers were purged out of me, and I became once more an ordinary human being.

I was content, I think, to die there, for I had plenty to eat and drink, and the animals and birds who came to me morning and evening kept me from even the thought of loneliness.

The rest is obvious.

I lost two cousins in South Africa, an uncle in the hunting-field.