About this story
There you meet the painter Raffaello Cellini, whose studio holds a decanter he forbids you to touch — a liquid he calls daily medicine and, for anyone unprepared, instant death — and a curtained canvas he calls the Angel of Life. A sitting for your portrait leaves you faint, certain you saw the curtain lift on its own, unsure whether it really did.
How it opens
Months of sleeplessness had made music painful and every ordinary effort exhausting.
DoctorMy medicines have not restored you, so climate must now attempt what chemistry has failed to do.
He prescribed the Riviera with confidence untouched by the limits of his treatment.
Amy EverardColonel Everard and I will share the journey; you shall not travel as an invalid alone.
Choose
Ask the doctor which symptoms would require immediate help abroad.
Ask Amy to treat the visit as companionship rather than supervision.