"Softly, sir, you are disturbing me. The patient is about to take a favourable turn, look how he is sweating. His sufferings are violent, and I am glad to see them, it shows that his vital energy is returning. Repose is a symptom of death, pain is a sign of life. Let us go on with our magnetising. These long passes from the temples to the shoulders work wonders. The whole soul of the sick man now clings to the thought that just because he himself cast forth his first grandchild, which he hated, therefore God took from him the other two which he loved. Notice, sir! that heaving bosom, those fiery red eyes, those swelling lips--all of them are in their way the interpreters of that one thought. God has punished him and you, the father and the grandfather; He has removed from you the blessing which you rejected of your own accord, and now you stand by yourselves in the world, so lonely, so comfortless, joined to each other by nothing but the recollection of a terrible loss." Széphalmi buried his head among the pillows of the speechless invalid and sobbed bitterly. Then the youth arose and took the old man's hand in his hand, gazed steadily into his burning eyes with his eyes, and with a voice of exaltation thus addressed the unhappy wretch, who seemed to be bearing in his bosom all the torments of Hell: "Suppose someone were to come here to you now and say, 'Behold! that outcast child, whom you wished to think of as dead, nay, or murdered! whose birth you cursed, and whose death you prayed for, I now give her back to you!'--how would you feel?" The sick man there and then drew the youth's hand up to his lips, and with an effort raised himself up in his bed. His lips were wide open, his tongue babbled something unintelligible, while Széphalmi regarded him with amazement, and tugged away at his own hair like one possessed. The youth put his hand into his bosom and drew forth the little baby's cap embroidered with rosebuds and forget-me-nots, and held it up before the two men. "What if someone were to restore to you the darling wearer of that little cap? What if I were to tell you that a single consolation still remained to you, an angel sent from Heaven in whom you could learn to rejoice once more? What if I were to tell you that she had grown up as gentle and as beautiful as those angels who are permitted to minister to the earth?" At these words the father knelt down at the stranger's feet and kissed his hands in a transport of joy, while old Hétfalusy, in a sort of paroxysm threw himself off the bed, made a snatch at the little pearl-embroidered cap, and exclaimed in a piercing voice: "Elise!" The remedy had indeed been efficacious. The old man was actually sitting up and had recovered the use of his tongue. The broken-down old man, who had been in a state of collapse, now violently seized the youth's arm with his still tremulous hand, and groped his way along it till he was able to touch the little cap with his lips.