NOSTALGIA. 217 



January all symptoms of disease had disappeared, but his emaciation 

 had so increased, and the sinking of his moral force was so alarming, 

 that the house-physician thought it his duty to remonstrate kindly 

 with him. Two soldiers and a nurse were placed in attendance on 

 him, who talked with him constantly in the Breton dialect, about his 

 country and his family. All these methods failed. On the 16th, when 

 examined again by the physician, the young patient sighed sadly, and, 

 with tears in his eyes, expressed himself nearly in these words : " It 

 is all over; I am very sure of it; I am going to die, and you will not 

 succeed in preventing it. I had never left Brittany ; I was satisfied, 

 rich, and happy ; my father died without ever having been severe with 

 me, leaving me always to do as I chose. I refused to go to college, and 

 was educated at home ; I grew up under the cure's training and in- 

 struction, and led the careless, pure, and honorable life of a Breton 

 gentleman. Who would have told me that I should ever leave Finis- 

 terre, and come to die in a hospital-bed at the gates of Paris ! I was 

 sure of it, the day I left Brittany, that it was all over with me. I was 

 at Villiers, at Champigny — I fought there, doing as the rest did, but 

 God refused to take me. He chose to try me yet more, and I bow to 

 his holy will. If you knew how I suffer ! Never to see my mansion 

 again, nor the forests, nor my flocks, my horse, and my dogs ! May 

 God shorten my misery, and pardon my weakness ! How loud the 

 guns sound this morning ! — the building will be battered down— do not 

 stay here — my last hour is near, and I wish to make ready for death 

 as a good Christian." The 23d of January the patient's pulse was at 

 110, his skin dry, his eye brilliant, his mind wandering, and on the 

 28th, at ten in the morning, he died. 



Benoist de la Grandiere gives some curious details about nostal- 

 gia in different nations. The French, precisely because they are more 

 attached to their country than any others, and feel a passionate aver- 

 sion to expatriation, are the very ones whom nostalgia most readily 

 attacks. The inhabitants of the western departments, particularly 

 the Bretons, and next to them those of the southern provinces and of 

 Corsica, are remarkably predisposed to it. The very religious life, the 

 manners so unchanging and the customs so characteristic which have 

 continued so long in Brittany, create bonds not to be severed without 

 danger between the soil of ancient Armorica and its inhabitants. The 

 Swiss, too, love their country warmly, and never quit it but with re- 

 gret. Nostalgia is not uncommon in Italy, particularly since the trans- 

 fer of conscripts from one end of the kingdom to the other has become 

 the practice. Between 1867 and 1870, the Italian Army showed a total 

 of 203 cases of positive nostalgia, eight of which were fatal. The 

 English and the Germans leave their country with less reluctance. 

 The English, above all, are spared nostalgia through their adventurous 

 spirit, and it may be said that their country is wherever the British 

 flag floats. The cosmopolitan character of the Germans is less posi- 



