After many weeks, however, he came slowly
back to himself--a changed self, but a sane self. Always odd in his
appearance--very tall and dark and thin--he had wasted to a walking
skeleton, and his black hair had turned snow-white. He had lost his
self-confidence, and dreaded to take up work again lest he should fail
in some delicate operation. Long leave was granted, and he was advised
by doctors who were his friends to go south, to sunshine and peace. But
Herter insisted that the one hope for ultimate cure was to stay in
Lorraine. He took up his quarters in what was left of a house near the
ruin of his mother's old home, in Luneville, but he was never there for
long at a time. He was provided with a pass to go and come as he liked,
being greatly respected and pitied at headquarters; and wherever there
was an air raid, there speedily and mysteriously appeared Paul Herter
among the victims.
His artificial foot did not prevent his riding a motor-bicycle, and on
this he arrived, no matter at what hour of night or day, at any town
within fifty miles of Luneville, when enemy airmen had been at work. He
gave his services unpaid to poor and rich alike; and owing to the dearth
of doctors not mobilized, the towns concerned welcomed him thankfully.
All the surgeon's serene confidence in himself returned in these
emergencies, and he was doing invaluable work. People were grateful, but
the man's ways and looks were so strange, his restlessness so tragic,
that they dubbed him "le Juif Errant.
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