He noted often that everything difficult he’d had to do seemed to have prepared him for the next difficult thing. Being imprisoned now seemed to have been one of the best things that ever happened to him because, after his escape, he had never looked at life the same way again. Every moment, every opportunity he’d been given after Poltava was a gift—from God, the Almighty One, the Divine, the Universal Intelligence, or whatever Corporal Gheorghe wanted to call it—and he gave thanks for those gifts by being happy and cheerful about nearly everything.
