Quentin had the care of the best surgeons on the French staff--a class of medical men who far excelled the rabble of apothecary boys then commissioned for the British army; the cool season of the year was favourable for his recovering from such an ugly slash on the caput as Eugene's steel had bestowed; so, our hero, having youth and health on his side, grew rapidly well, and by the 16th of February--one month after the battle--he had become quite convalescent; but politeness even could scarcely make him repress his impatience to begone; yet he knew that, though the guest of General Ribeaupierre, he was still a prisoner of war, and could not leave any French territory until duly exchanged. During his illness he had many a strange and fantastic dream of Flora and of home. But now there came to him dim memories of an infancy _beyond_ that spent at Rohallion; there was the quaint foreign town, with its winding river, its antique bridge, its boats and windmills. Like a dream, or some vision of mystic memory, he remembered this place in all its details and features, and with them came the old and confused recollection of a lady, it might be, nay, it _must_ have been, his own mother, in rich velvet with powdered hair. Then came his father's face, pale and despairing, and the night of the wreck at the Partan Craig, all jumbled oddly together. Was it a sense of pre-existence--that sense felt by so many at different times--that haunted him? Was it a sense of the _unreality_ of the present f conflicting with the certainty of the past? We cannot say; but there came upon his mind a strange consciousness that this scene, this river, with its town and woods and hills, this lady in velvet and powder, were not creations of the fancy, and were not new to him. Was it a phase of that which is termed by Dr. Wigan the "duality of the human mind," which comes upon us at times-- "As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood, _And ebb into a former life?_" We pretend not to say; but poor Quentin was sorely puzzled, and that sabre cut in no way made his reasoning faculties clearer. His room, a large one facing the bay of Orsan, was decorated for him daily by a quantity of beautiful flowers, which madame procured from the conservatory of the captain-general--flowers so charming at that season--scarlet and white camellias, rare geraniums, and glorious roses of every hue; while in the trellis-work verandah without were magnolias and creeping plants whose tendrils were covered with odoriferous flowers, through which the sea-breeze came, blending and mingling pleasantly with the fragrant and earthy odour of the tiled floor, which was daily sprinkled with spring water.