For this was, in fact, the state of things. Christian’s “misery” in the left side had increased so much of late that it had become actual pain, severe enough to make him forget all smaller woes. He was quite helpless, and had written to his mother from London that he was coming home, for her to take care of him. He quit his situation in London and started off; but at Hamburg had been obliged to take to his bed; the doctor diagnosed his ailment as rheumatism of the joints, and he had been removed from his hotel to a hospital. Any further journey was for the time impossible. There he lay, and dictated to his attendant letters that betrayed extreme depression. “Yes,” said the Senator, quietly. “It seems as if one thing just followed on another.” She put her arm for an instant across his shoulders. “But _you_ musn’t give way, Tom. This is no time for you to be down-hearted. You need all your courage--” “Yes, God knows I need it.” “What do you mean, Tom? Tell me, why were you so quiet Thursday afternoon at dinner, if I may ask?” “Oh--business, my child. I had to sell no very small quantity of grain not very advantageously--or, rather, I had to sell a large quantity very much at a loss.” “Well, that happens, Tom. You sell at a loss to-day, and to-morrow you make it good again. To get discouraged over a thing of that kind--” “Wrong, Tony,” he said, and shook his head. “My courage does not go down to zero because I have a piece of bad luck. It’s the other way on. I believe in that, and events show it.” “But what is the matter with it, then?” she asked, surprised and alarmed. “One would think you have enough to make you happy, Tom. Clara is alive, and with God’s help she will get better. And as for everything else--here we are, walking about, in your own garden, and it all smells so sweet--and yonder is your house, a dream of a house--Hermann Hagenström’s is a dog-kennel beside it! And you have done all that--” “Yes, it is almost too beautiful, Tony. I’ll tell you--it is too new. It jars on me a little--perhaps that is what is the matter with me. It may be responsible for the bad mood that comes over me and spoils everything. I looked forward immensely to all this; but the anticipation was the best part of it--it always is. Everything gets done too slowly--so when it is finished the pleasure is already gone.” “The pleasure is gone, Tom? At your age?” “A man is as young, or as old, as he feels. And when one gets one’s wish too late, or works too hard for it, it comes already weighted with all sorts of small vexatious drawbacks--with all the dust of reality upon it, that one did not reckon with in fancy. It is so irritating--so _irritating_--” “Oh yes.--But what do you mean by ‘as old as you feel’?”