16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
me, Stephen, what were you doing in eightynine?'
'Oh,' said Stephen vaguely, 'I was studying
medicine.' With this he set down his glass and
walked into the quarter-gallery. He had been
studying medicine, it was true, walking the
wards of the Hôtel-Dieu, but he had also
spent a great deal of the time running about
the streets of Paris in the headiest state of
happy excitement that could be imagined, or
rather exaltation, in the dawn of the Revolution,
when every disinterested, generous idea
of freedom seemed on the point of realization,
the dawn of an infinitely finer age.
When he came back he found Jack arranging
the score of their next duet on their music
stands. Like many other heavy men Jack could
be as sensitive as a cat on occasion: he knew
that he had touched on some painful area –
that in any case Stephen hated questions –