More than two years had passed since we had seen one another. And while Paschális had always been pale and anaemic, as is natural in a young man who cares so sparingly about his body, while so unsparingly overworking his mind, I had none the less never seen him so pale, so exhausted. Of course given those cool mountains, amid comforts, now incomparably more humane than those in Athens, and after so many hymns of praise for the climate in which he lived, I had expected to find him full of life and vigour. And yet here in front of me I had him dumb from emotion and I squeezed him repeatedly in my embrace and with a frisson I felt the heat of his dry lips, the fever of his sweating hands, while I, even in spite of my illness and the fatigue of my journey, moved in the middle of that life-givi
