This brought him a deluge of letters; and it forced him to another swift descent into the world of reality. “I have told you nothing of my sufferings,” wrote Corydon. “At least a score of times I have written you long letters and then torn them up, saying that your work must not be disturbed. But oh, Thyrsis, I do not think I can stand it much longer! Can you imagine what it means to be shut up in a boarding-house, without one living soul to understand about me?”
She would go on to tell of her griefs and humiliations, her longings and rages and despairs. Then, too, Cedric was not growing as he should. “He is beautiful,” she wrote, “and every one loves him. But he makes not the least attempt to sit up, and I am very much worried. I fear that I ought not to go on nursing him--I am too nervous to eat as I should. And then I think of the winter, and that we may still be separated, and I do not see how I am to stand it. It is as if I were in a prison. I think of you, and I cannot make you real to me.”
To all of which Thyrsis could only reply with vague hopes--and then go away for a tramp in the forest, and call to his soul for new courage. He had still troubles enough of his own. For one thing, the fiend in his stomach was not to be exorcised by any spell he knew. It was all very picturesque to portray one’s hero as dying of disease; but in reality it was not at all satisfactory. Thyrsis did not die, he merely ate a bowl of bread and milk, and then went about for several hours, feeling as if there were a football blown up inside of him.
He had a touching faith in the medical profession in those days, and whenever there was anything wrong with him, he would turn the problem over to a doctor and his soul would be at rest. In this case the doctor told him that he had dyspepsia--not a very difficult diagnosis--and gave him a bottle full of a red liquid to be taken after meals. To Thyrsis this seemed an example of the marvels of science, of the adjustment of means to ends; for behold, when he had taken the red liquid, the bread and milk disappeared as if by magic! And he might go on and eat anything else--if there was trouble, he had only to take more of the red liquid! So he plunged into work on a pot-boiler, and wrote Corydon to be of cheer, that the dawn was breaking.