Spreading the rugs out on the dirty earthen floor, I make up my mind to twenty-four hours here at least.
It is, perhaps, the dirtiest post-house we have seen since leaving Teheran; but moving under the present circumstances is out of the question.
The long summer day wears slowly away.

Gerome, like a true Russian, hunts up a samovar in the village, and consoles himself with innumerable glasses of tea and cigarettes, while the medicine-chest is brought into requisition, and I bathe the swollen limb unceasingly for three or four hours with Goulard's extract and water, surrounded by a ring of admiring and very dirty natives.

But my efforts are in vain, for the following morning the pain is as severe, the leg as swollen as ever.

Gerome is all for applying a blister, which he says will "bring the poison out"! Another miserable day breaks, and finds me still helpless.

I do not think I ever realized before how slowly time can pass, for I had not a single book, with the exception of "Propos d'Exil," by Pierre Loti, and even that delightful work is apt to pall after three complete perusals in the space of as many weeks.