For the first time for years he felt that he must rest. The lassitude of his convalescence was in itself a rest for him after the extraordinary tension of mind that had gone before his illness and had left him still exhausted. Christophe, who for many months had been continually on the alert and strained upon his guard, felt the fixity of his gaze slowly relax. He was not less strong for it: he was more human. The great though rather monstrous quality of life of the man of genius had passed into the background: he found himself a man like the rest, purged of the fanaticism of his mind, and all the hardness and mercilessness of his actions. He hated nothing: he gave no thought to things that exasperated him, or, if he did, he shrugged them off: he thought less of his own troubles and more of the troubles of others. Since Sidonie had reminded him of the silent suffering of the lowly, fighting on without complaint, all over the world, he forgot himself in them. He who was not usually sentimental now had periods of that mystic tenderness which is the flower of weakness and sickness. In the evening, as he sat with his elbows on the window-sill, gazing down into the courtyard and listening to all the mysterious noises of the night,... a voice singing in a house near by, made moving by the distance, or a little girl artlessly strumming Mozart,... he thought: "All you whom I love though I know you not! You whom life has not sullied; you, who dream of great things, that you know to be impossible, while you fight for them against the envious world,--may you be happy--it is so good to be happy!... Oh, my friends, I know that you are there, and I hold my arms out to you.... There is a wall between us. Stone by stone I am breaking it down, but I am myself broken in the labor of it. Shall we ever be together? Shall I reach you before another wall is raised up between us: the wall of death?... No matter! Though all my life I am alone, so only I may work for you, do you good, and you may love me a little, later on, when I am dead!..." * * * * * So the convalescent Christophe was nursed by those two good foster-mothers "_Liebe und Noth_" (Love and Poverty). * * * * *