what was given them, and patient when anything was withheld. Others of
a still higher order of understanding, attributed the eccentricities of
the caretakers to one cause alone: the Petershof air. They know it had
the invariable effect of getting into the head, and upsetting the
balance of those who drank deep of it. Therefore no one was to blame,
and no one need be bitter. But these were the philosophers of the
colony: a select and dainty few in any colony. But there were several
rebels amongst the invalids, and they found consolation in confiding to
each other their separate grievances. They generally held their
conferences in the rooms known as the newspaper-rooms, where they were
not likely to be interrupted by any caretakers who might have stayed at
home because, they were tired out.
To-day there were only a few rebels gathered together, but they were
more than usually excited, because the Doctors had told several of them
that their respective caretakers must be sent home.
"What must I do?" said little Mdlle. Gerardy, wringing her hands. "The
Doctor says that I must tell my sister to go home: that she only worries
me, and makes me worse. He calls her a 'whirlwind.' If I won't tell her,
then he will tell her, and we shall have some more scenes. Mon Dieu! and
I am so tired of them. They terrify me. I would suffer anything rather
than have a fresh scene. And I can't get her to do anything for, me.
She has no time for, me. And, yet she thinks she takes the greatest
possible care of me, and devotes the whole day to me. Why, sometimes I
never see her for hours together."
"Well, at least she does not quarrel with every one, as my mother does,"
said a Polish gentleman, M. Lichinsky. "Nearly every day she has a
quarrel with some one or other; and then she comes to me and says she
has been insulted. And others come to me mad with rage, and complain
that they have been insulted by her. As though I were to blame! I tell
them that now. I tell them that my mother's quarrels are not my quarrels.
But one longs for peace. And the Doctor says I must have it, and that
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