(no subject)
"[H]is anguish was complicated by diarrhea and green vomit, he became disoriented and suffered from sudden fainting spells, and his mother was terrified because his condition did not resemble the turmoil of love so much as the devistation of cholera. [His] godfather, an old homeopathic practitioner who had been [his mother's] confidant ever since her days as a secret mistress, was also alarmed at first by the patient's condition, because he had the weak pulse, the hoarse breathing, and the pale perspiration of a dying man. But his examination revealed that he had no fever, no pain anywhere, and that his only concrete feeling was an urgent desire to die. All that was needed was shrewed questioning, first of the patient and then of his mother, to conclude once again that the symptoms of love were the same as those of cholera."