Читать книгу The Secret Dispatch; or, The Adventures of Captain Balgonie онлайн

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It was no feverish dream of Balgonie that Natalie Mierowna had been hovering about his bedside; for she and her cousin Mariolizza had been his especial nurses.

In less than three days the feverish delirium subsided, sense completely returned, and the young Captain appeared to be labouring only under a species of influenza. A cold, as we understand that homely but troublesome kind of ailment in foggy Britain, is almost unknown in the latitude of St. Petersburg. "It is," says Dr. Granville, "indigenous to England, and, above all, to London;" yet we fear Balgonie had a most unromantic and unmistakable cold, consequent on his immersion in the icy Louga, together with an aguish shivering, which rendered the quitting of his couch, and betaking himself to the saddle, as yet quite impossible.

Balgonie had an insatiable thirst: he had visions of iced champagne; but in lieu, got only tea-punch, if we may so call it, being tea in the fashion still taken by the Russians (who hold that milk spoils it), with a slice of lemon or preserved fruit; and as he got stronger, Katinki, a strapping Polish damsel with fine black eyes, who was Natalie's own particular follower, added thereto a dash of rum and then tsvetochay, or flowery tea, with cakes, which the Captain seemed to relish all the more when he understood them to be made by the white hands of Natalie: an appreciation which showed a decided improvement in that young officer's health. But—