R.I.P. ⁠— requiescat in pace , you know. That seems to me the most beautiful expression⁠—I like it much better than ‘He’s a jolly good fellow,’ which is simply rowdy. I think all that comes from the fact that I have a weakness myself, and always felt at home with illness⁠—the way I do now. But things being as they are, I find it very lucky that I came here, and that I was examined. Certainly you have no call to reproach yourself. You heard what he said: if I were to go down and continue as I have been, I should have the whole lobe at the devil before I could say Jack Robinson.”

“You can’t tell,” Joachim said. “That is just what you never can tell. They said you had already had places, of which nobody took any notice and they healed of themselves, and left nothing but a few trifling dullnesses. It might have been the same way with the moist spot you are supposed to have now, if you hadn’t come up here at all. One can never know.”