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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Conscience by Hector Malot, v1
+#73 in our series The French Immortals Crowned by the French Academy
+#1 in our series by Hector Malot
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+Title: Conscience, v1
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+Author: Hector Malot
+
+Release Date: April, 2003  [Etext #3986]
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+
+
+
+
+
+CONSCIENCE
+
+By HECTOR MALOT
+
+
+With a Preface by EDOUARD PAILLERON, of the French Academy
+
+
+
+BOOK 1.
+
+
+HECTOR MALOT
+
+HECTOR-HENRI MALOT, the son of a notary public, was born at La Brouille
+(Seine-Inferieure), March 20, 1830.  He studied law, intending to devote
+himself also to the Notariat, but toward 1853 or 1854 commenced writing
+for various small journals.  Somewhat later he assisted in compiling the
+'Biographie Generale' of Firmin Didot, and was also a contributor to some
+reviews.  Under the generic title of 'Les Victimes d'Amour,' he made his
+debut with the following three family-romances: 'Les Amants (1859), Les
+Epoux (1865), and Les Enfants (1866).'  About the same period he
+published a book, 'La Vie Moderne en Angleterre.'  Malot has written
+quite a number of novels, of which the greatest is 'Conscience,' crowned
+by the French Academy in 1878.
+
+His works have met with great success in all countries.  They possess
+that lasting interest which attends all work based on keen observation
+and masterly analysis of the secret motives of human actions.
+
+The titles of his writings run as follows: 'Les Amours de Jacques (1868);
+Un Beau Frere (1869); Romain Kalbris (1864), being a romance for
+children; Une Bonne Afaire, and Madame Obernin (1870); Un Cure de
+Province (1872); Un Mariage sons le Second Empire (1873); Une Belle Mere
+(1874); L'Auberge du Monde (1875-1876, 4 vols.); Les Batailles du Mariage
+(1877, 3 vols.); Cara (1877); Le Docteur Claude (1879); Le Boheme
+Tapageuse (1880, 3 vols.); Pompon, and Une Femme d'Argent (1881); La
+Petite Soeur, and Les Millions Honteux (1882); Les Besogneux, and
+Paulette (1883); Marichette, and Micheline (1884.); Le Lieutenant Bonnet,
+and Sang Bleu (1885); Baccara, and Zyte (1886); Viceo Francis, Seduction,
+and Ghislaine (1887); Mondaine (1888); Mariage Riche, and Justice (1889);
+Mere (1890), Anie (1891); Complices (1892); Conscience (1893); and Amours
+de Jeunes et Amours de Vieux (1894).'
+
+About this time Hector Malot resolved not to write fiction any more.
+He announced this determination in a card published in the journal,
+'Le Temps,' May 25, 1895--It was then maliciously stated that "M. Malot
+his retired from business after having accumulated a fortune."  However,
+he took up his pen again and published a history of his literary life:
+Le Roman de mes Romans (1896); besides two volumes of fiction, L'Amour
+dominateur (1896), and Pages choisies (1898), works which showed that,
+in the language of Holy Writ, "his eye was not dimmed nor his natural
+force abated," and afforded him a triumph over his slanderers.
+
+                                   EDOUARD PAILLERON
+                              de l'Academie Francaise.
+
+
+
+
+CONSCIENCE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE REUNION
+
+When Crozat, the Bohemian, escaped from poverty, by a good marriage that
+made him a citizen of the Rue de Vaugirard, he did not break with his old
+comrades; instead of shunning them, or keeping them at a distance, he
+took pleasure in gathering them about him, glad to open his house to
+them, the comforts of which were very different from the attic of the Rue
+Ganneron, that he had occupied for so long a time.
+
+Every Wednesday, from four to seven o'clock, he had a reunion at his
+house, the Hotel des Medicis, and it was a holiday for which his friends
+prepared themselves.  When a new idea occurred to one of the habitues it
+was caressed, matured, studied in solitude, in order to be presented in
+full bloom at the assembly.
+
+Crozat's reception of his friends was pleasing, simple, like the man,
+cordial on the part of the husband, as well as on the part of the wife,
+who, having been an actress, held to the religion of comradeship: On a
+table were small pitchers of beer and glasses; within reach was an old
+stone jar from Beauvais, full of tobacco.  The beer was good, the tobacco
+dry, and the glasses were never empty.
+
+And it was not silly subjects that were discussed here, worldly
+babblings, or gossiping about absent friends, but the great questions
+that ruled humanity: philosophy, politics, society, and religion.
+
+Formed at first of friends, or, at least, of comrades who had worked and
+suffered together, these reunions had enlarged gradually, until one day
+the rooms at the Hotel des Medicis became a 'parlotte' where preachers of
+ideas and of new religions, thinkers, reformers, apostles, politicians,
+aesthetes, and even babblers in search of ears more or less complaisant
+that would listen to them, met together.  Any one might come who wished,
+and if one did not enter there exactly as one would enter an ordinary
+hotel, it was sufficient to be brought by an habitue in order to have the
+right to a pipe, some beer, and to speak.
+
+One of the habitues, Brigard, was a species of apostle, who had acquired
+celebrity by practising in his daily life the ideas that he professed and
+preached.  Comte de Brigard by birth, he began by renouncing his title,
+which made him a vassal of the respect of men and of social conventions;
+an instructor of law, he could easily have made a thousand or twelve
+hundred francs a month, but he arranged the number and the price of his
+lessons so that each day brought him only ten francs in order that he
+might not be a slave to money; living with a woman whom he loved, he had
+always insisted, although he had two daughters, on living with her 'en
+union libre', and in not acknowledging his children legally, because the
+law debased the ties which attached him to them and lessened his duties;
+it was conscience that sanctioned these duties; and nature, like
+conscience, made him the most faithful of lovers, the best, the most
+affectionate, the most tender of fathers.  Tall, proud, carrying in his
+person and manners the native elegance of his race, he dressed like the
+porter at the corner, only replacing the blue velvet by chestnut velvet,
+a less frivolous color.  Living in Clamart for twenty years, he always
+came to Paris on foot, and the only concessions that he made to
+conventionality or to his comfort were to wear sabots in winter, and to
+carry his vest on his arm in summer.
+
+Thus organized, he must have disciples, and he sought them everywhere--
+in the streets, where he buttonholed those he was able to snatch under
+the trees of the Luxembourg Gardens, and on Wednesday at the house of his
+old comrade Crozat.  How many he had had!  But, unfortunately, the
+greater number turned out badly.  Several became ministers; others
+accepted high government positions for life; some handled millions of
+francs; two were at Noumea; one preached in the pulpit of Notre Dame.
+
+One afternoon in October the little parlor was full; the end of the
+summer vacation had brought back the habitues, and for the first time the
+number was nearly large enough to open a profitable discussion.  Crozat,
+near the door, smiled at the arrivals on shaking hands, and Brigard, his
+soft felt hat on his head, presided, assisted by his two favorite
+disciples of the moment, the advocate Nougarede and the poet Glady,
+neither of whom would turn out badly, he was certain.
+
+To tell the truth, for those who knew how to look and to see, the pale
+face of Nougarede, his thin lips, restless eyes, and an austerity of
+dress and manners which clashed with his twenty-six years, gave him more
+the appearance of a man of ambition than of an apostle.  And when one
+knew that Glady was the owner of a beautiful house in Paris, and of real
+estate in the country that brought him a hundred thousand francs a year,
+it was difficult to imagine that he would long follow Father Brigard.
+
+But to see was not the dominant faculty of Brigard; it was to reason,
+and reason told him that ambition would soon make Nougarede a deputy,
+as fortune would one day make Glady an academician; and in that case,
+although he detested assemblies as much as academies, they would then
+have two tribunes whence the good word would fall on the multitude with
+more weight.  They might be counted on.  When Nougarede began to come to
+the Wednesday reunions he was as empty as a drum, and if he spoke
+brilliantly on no matter what subject with an imperturbable eloquence,
+it was to say nothing.  In Glady's first volume were words learnedly
+arranged to please the ears and the eyes.  Now, ideas sustained the
+discourse of the advocate, as the verses of the poet said something--and
+these ideas were Brigard's; this something was the perfume of his
+teaching.
+
+For half an hour the pipes burned fiercely, the smoke slowly rose to the
+ceiling, and as in a cloud Brigard might be seen like a bearded god,
+proclaiming his law, his hat on his head; for, if he had made a rule
+never to take it off, he manipulated it continually while he spoke,
+frequently pushing it forward, sometimes to the back of his head, to the
+right, to the left, raising it, and flattening it, according to the needs
+of his argument.
+
+"It is incontestable," he said, "that we scatter our great force when we
+ought to concentrate it."
+
+He pressed down his hat.
+
+"In effect," he raised it, "the hour has arrived for us to assert
+ourselves as a group, and it is a duty for us, since it is a need of
+humanity--"
+
+At this moment a new arrival glided into the room quietly, with the
+manifest intention of disturbing no one; but Crozat, who was seated near
+the door, stopped him and shook hands.
+
+"'Tiens', Saniel!  Good-day, doctor."
+
+"Good-evening, my dear sir."
+
+"Come to the table; the beer is good to-day."
+
+"Thank you; I am very well here."
+
+Without taking the chair that Crozat designated, he leaned against the
+wall.  He was a tall, solid man about thirty, with tawny hair falling on
+the collar of his coat, a long, curled beard, a face energetic, but
+troubled and wan, to which the pale blue eyes gave an expression of
+hardness that was accentuated by a prominent jaw and a decided air.  A
+Gaul, a true Gaul of ancient times, strong, bold, and resolute.
+
+Brigard continued:
+
+"It is incontestable"--this was his formula, because everything he said
+was incontestable to him, simply because he said it--"it is incontestable
+that in the struggle for existence the dogma of conscience must be
+established, its only sanction being the performance of duty and inward
+satisfaction--"
+
+"Duty accomplished toward whom?"  interrupted Saniel.
+
+"Toward one's self."
+
+"Then begin by stating what are our duties, and codify what is good and
+what is bad."
+
+"That is easy," some one replied.
+
+"Easy if you admit a certain innate regard for human life, for property,
+and for the family.  But you must acknowledge that not all men have this
+regard.  How many believe that it is not a fault to run away with the
+wife of a friend, not a crime to appropriate something that they want, or
+to kill an enemy!  Where are the duties of those who reason and feel in
+this way?  What is their inward satisfaction worth?  This is why I will
+not admit that conscience is the proper guide of our actions."
+
+There were several exclamations at this, which Brigard checked.
+
+"What guide, then, shall men obey?"  he demanded.
+
+"Force, which is the last word of the philosophy of life "
+
+"That which leads to a wise and progressive extermination.  Is this what
+you desire?"
+
+"Why not?  I do not shrink from an extermination that relieves humanity
+of idlers that it drags about without power to advance or to free itself,
+finally sinking under the load.  Is it not better for the world to be rid
+of such people, who obstruct the advancement of others?"
+
+"At least the idea is bizarre coming from a doctor," interrupted Crozat,
+"since it would put an end to hospitals."
+
+"Not at all; I would preserve them for the study of monsters."
+
+"In placing society on this antagonistic footing," said Brigard, "you
+destroy society itself, which is founded on reciprocity, on good
+fellowship; and in doing so you can create for the strong a state of
+suspicion that paralyzes them.  Carthage and Venice practised the
+selection by force, and destroyed themselves."
+
+"You speak of force, my dear Saniel," interrupted a voice; "where do you
+get that--the force of things, the tatum?  There is no beginning, no
+will; events decide for us climate, temperament, environment."
+
+"Then," replied Saniel, "there is no responsibility, and this instrument
+conscience, that should decide everything, is good for nothing.  You need
+not consider consequences.  Success or defeat may yet be immaterial, for
+the accomplishment of an act that you have believed condemnable may serve
+the race, while another that you have believed beneficent may prove
+injurious; from which it follows that intentions only should be judged,
+and that no one but God can sound human hearts to their depths."
+
+He began to laugh.
+
+"Do you believe that?  Is that the conclusion at which you have arrived?"
+
+A waiter entered, carrying pitchers of beer on a tray, and the discussion
+was necessarily interrupted, every one drawing up to the table where
+Crozat filled the glasses, and the conversation took a more private turn.
+
+Saniel shook hands with Brigard, who received him somewhat coldly; then
+he approached Glady with the manifest intention of detaining him, but
+Glady had said that he was obliged to leave, so Saniel said that he could
+remain no longer, and had only dropped in on passing.
+
+When they were both gone Brigard turned to Crozat and Nougarede, who were
+near him, and declared that Saniel made him uneasy.
+
+"He believes himself stronger than life," he said, "because he is sound
+and intelligent.  He must take care that he does not go too far!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE RICH MAN'S REFUSAL
+
+When Saniel and Glady reached the street, the rain that had fallen since
+morning had ceased, and the asphalt shone clear and glittering like a
+mirror.
+
+"The walking is good," Saniel remarked.
+
+"It will rain again," responded Glady, looking at the sky.
+
+"I think not."  It was evident that Glady wished to take a cab, but as
+none passed he was obliged to walk with Saniel.
+
+"Do you know," he said, "that you have wounded Brigard?"
+
+"I regret it sincerely; but the salon of our friend Crozat is not yet a
+church, and I do not suppose that discussion is forbidden there."
+
+"To deny is not to discuss."
+
+"You say that as if you were angry with me."
+
+"Not at all.  I am sorry that you have wounded Brigard--nothing more."
+
+"That is too much, because I have a sincere esteem, a real friendship for
+you, if you will permit me to say so."
+
+But Glady, apparently, did not desire the conversation to take this turn.
+
+"I think this is an empty cab," he said, as a fiacre approached them.
+
+"No," replied Saniel, "I see the light of a cigar through the
+windowpane."
+
+Glady made a slight gesture of impatience that was not lost upon Saniel,
+who was expecting some such demonstration.
+
+Rich, and frequenting the society of poor men, Glady lived in dread of
+borrowers.  It was enough for any man to appear to wish to talk to him
+privately to make him believe that he was going to ask for fifty louis or
+twenty francs; so often was this the case that every friend or comrade
+was an enemy against whom he must defend his purse.  And so he lay in
+wait as if expecting some one to spring upon him, his eyes open, his ears
+listening, and his hands in his pockets.  This explains his attitude
+toward Saniel, in whom he scented a demand for money, and was the reason
+for his attempt to escape by taking a cab.  But luck was against him, and
+he tried to decline the unspoken request in another way.
+
+"Do not be surprised," he said, with the volubility with which a man
+speaks when he does not wish to give his companion a chance to say a
+word, "that I was pained to see Brigard take seriously an argument that
+evidently was not directed against him."
+
+"Neither against him nor against his ideas."
+
+"I know that; you do not need to defend yourself.  But I have so much
+friendship, so much esteem and respect for Brigard that everything that
+touches him affects me.  And how could it be otherwise when one knows his
+value, and what a man he is?  This life of mediocrity that he lives, in
+order to be free, is it not admirable?  What a beautiful example!"
+
+"Not every one can follow it."
+
+"You think that one cannot be contented with ten francs a day?"
+
+"I mean that not every one has the chance to make ten francs a day."
+
+The vague fears of Glady became definite at these words.  They had walked
+down the Rue Ferou and reached the Place St. Sulpice.
+
+"I think that at last I am going to find a cab," he said, precipitately.
+
+But this hope was not realized; there was not a single cab at the
+station, and he was forced to submit to the assault from Saniel.
+
+And Saniel began:
+
+"You are compelled to walk with me, and, frankly, I rejoice, because I
+wish to talk to you of a serious affair--on which depends my future."
+
+"This is a poor place for serious talk."
+
+"I do not find it so."
+
+"We would better appoint some other time."
+
+"Why should we, since chance has thrown us together here?"
+
+Glady resigned himself to the inevitable, and was as polite as he could
+be in the circumstances.
+
+"I await your pleasure," he said in a gracious tone, that was a contrast
+to his former one.
+
+Saniel, who was in such a hurry a few moments before, now silently walked
+by Glady, whose eyes were on the shining asphalt pavement.
+
+At last he spoke.
+
+"I have told you that my future depends on the affair concerning which I
+wish to speak to you.  I can tell you all in a few words: If I am not
+able to procure three thousand francs within two days, I shall be obliged
+to leave Paris, to give up my studies and my work here, and go and bury
+myself in my native town and become a plain country doctor."
+
+Glady did not flinch; if he had not foreseen the amount he expected the
+demand, and he continued gazing at his feet.
+
+"You know," continued Saniel, "that I am the son of peasants; my father
+was marshal in a poor village of Auvergne.  At school I gave proof of a
+certain aptitude for work above my comrades, and our cure conceived an
+affection for me and taught me all he knew.  Then he made me enter a
+small seminary.  But I had neither the docile mind nor the submissive
+character that was necessary for this education, and after several years
+of pranks and punishments, although I was not expelled, I was given to
+understand that my departure would be hailed with delight.  I then became
+usher in a small school, but without salary, taking board and lodging as
+payment.  I passed a good examination and was preparing for my degree,
+when I left the school owing to a quarrel.  I had made some money by
+giving private lessons, and I found myself the possessor of nearly eighty
+francs.  I started for Paris, where I arrived at five o'clock one morning
+in June, and where I knew, no one.  I had a small trunk containing a few
+shirts, which obliged me to take a carriage.  I told the coachman to
+take me to a hotel in the Latin Quarter.  'Which hotel?' he asked; 'I do
+not care,' I answered.  'Do you wish to go to the Hotel du Senat?'
+The name pleased me; perhaps it was an omen.  He took me to the Hotel du
+Senat, where, with what I had left of my eighty francs, I paid a month in
+advance.  I stayed there eight years."
+
+"That is remarkable."
+
+"What else could I do?  I knew Latin and Greek as well as any man in
+France, but as far as anything else was concerned I was as ignorant as a
+schoolmaster.  The same day I tried to make use of what I knew, and I
+went to a publisher of classic books, of whom I had heard my professor of
+Greek literature speak.  After questioning me he gave me a copy of Pindar
+to prepare with Latin notes, and advanced me thirty francs, which lasted
+me a month.  I came to Paris with the desire to work, but without having
+made up my mind what to do.  I went wherever there were lectures, to the
+Sorbonne, to the College de France, to the Law School, and to the School
+of Medicine; but it was a month before I came to a decision.  The
+subtleties of law displeased me, but the study of medicine, depending
+upon the observation of facts, attracted me, and I decided to become a
+doctor."
+
+"A marriage of reason."
+
+"No, a marriage for love.  Because, if I had consulted reason, it would
+have told me that to marry medicine when one has nothing--neither family
+to sustain you nor relatives to push you--would be to condemn yourself to
+a life of trials, of battles, and of misery.  My student life was happy;
+I worked hard, and by giving lessons in Latin I had enough to eat.  When
+I received as house-surgeon six, eight, nine hundred francs, I thought it
+a large fortune, and I would have remained in this position for the rest
+of my life if I had been able to do so, but when I took my degree of
+doctor I was obliged to leave the hospital.  The possessor of several
+thousand francs, I should have followed rigorously my dream of ambition.
+While attending the mistress of one of my comrades I made the
+acquaintance of an upholsterer, who suggested that he should furnish an
+apartment for me, and that I might pay him later.  I yielded to
+temptation.  Remember, I had passed eight years in the Hotel du Senat,
+and I knew nothing of Paris life.  A home of my own!  My own furniture,
+and a servant in my anteroom!  I should be somebody!  My upholsterer
+could have installed me in his own quarter of Paris, and perhaps could
+have obtained some patients for me among his customers, who are rich and
+fashionable.  But he did not do this, probably concluding that with my
+awkward appearance I would not be a success with such people.  When you
+are successful it is original to be a peasant--people find you clever;
+but before success comes to you it is a disgrace.  He furnished me an
+apartment in a very respectable house in the Rue Louis-le-Grand.  When I
+went into it I had debts to the amount of ten thousand francs behind me,
+the interest on this sum, the rent of two thousand four hundred francs,
+not a sou in my pocket, not a relative--"
+
+"That was courageous."
+
+"I did not know that in Paris everything is accomplished through
+influence, and I imagined that an intelligent man could make his way
+without assistance.  I was to learn by experience.  When a new doctor
+arrives anywhere his brother doctors do not receive him with much
+sympathy.  'What does this intruder want?'  'Are there not enough of us
+already?'  He is watched, and the first patient that he loses is made use
+of as an example of his ignorance or imprudence, and his position becomes
+uncomfortable.  The chemists of my quarter whom I called upon did not
+receive me very warmly; they made me feel the distance that separates an
+honorable merchant from a beggar, and I was given to understand that they
+could patronize me only on condition that I ordered the specialties that
+they wished to profit by--iron from this one and tar from that.  On
+commencing to practise I had as patients only the people of the quarter,
+whose principle was never to pay a doctor, and who wait for the arrival
+of a new one in order that they may be rid of the old one and this sort
+is numerous everywhere.  It happened that my concierge was from Auvergne
+like myself, and he considered it his duty to make me give free
+attendance to all those from our country that he could find in the
+quarter and everywhere else, so that I had the patriotic satisfaction of
+seeing all the charcoal-dealers from Auvergne sprawling in my beautiful
+armchairs.  Finally, by remaining religiously at home every Sunday in
+summer, while the other doctors were away, by rising quickly at night
+every time my bell rang, I was able to acquire a practice among a class
+of people who were more reasonable and satisfactory.  I obtained a prize
+at the Academy.  At the same time I delivered, at a moderate price,
+lectures in anatomy at schools on the outskirts of the city; I gave
+lessons; I undertook all the anonymous work of the book trade and of
+journalism that I could find.  I slept five hours a day, and in four
+years I had decreased my debt seven thousand francs.  If my upholsterer
+wished to be paid I could have it arranged, but that was not his
+intention.  He wishes to take his furniture that is not worn out, and to
+keep the money that he has received.  If I do not pay these three
+thousand francs in a few days I shall be turned into the street.  To tell
+the truth, I shall soon have a thousand francs, but those who owe it to
+me are not in Paris, or will pay in January.  Behold my situation! I am
+desperate because there is no one to whom I can apply; those whom I have
+asked for money have not listened to me; I have told you that I have no
+relatives, and neither have I any friends--perhaps because I am not
+amiable.  And then I thought of you.  You know me.  You know that people
+say I have a future before me.  At the end of three months I shall be a
+doctor in the hospitals; my competitors admit that I shall not miss
+admission; I have undertaken some experiments that will, perhaps, give me
+fame.  Will you give me your hand?"
+
+Glady extended it toward him.  "I thank you for having applied to me; it
+is a proof of confidence that touches me."  He pressed the hand that he
+had taken with some warmth.  "I see that you have divined the sentiments
+of esteem with which you have inspired me."
+
+Saniel drew a long breath.
+
+"Unfortunately," continued Glady, "I cannot do what you desire without
+deviating from my usual line of conduct.  When I started out in life I
+lent to all those who appealed to me, and when I did not lose my friends
+I lost my money.  I then took an oath to refuse every one.  It is an oath
+that I cannot break.  What would my old friends say if they learned that
+I did for a young man what I have refused to do for them?"
+
+"Who would know it?"
+
+"My conscience."
+
+They had reached the Quai Voltaire, where fiacres were stationed.
+
+"At last here are some cabs," Glady said.  "Pardon me for leaving you,
+but I am in a hurry."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A LAST RESORT
+
+Gady entered the cab so quickly that Saniel remained staring at the
+sidewalk, slightly dazed.  It was only when the door closed that he
+understood.
+
+"His conscience!"  he murmured.  "Behold them!  Tartufes!"
+
+After a moment of hesitation, he continued his way and reached the bridge
+of Saints-Peres, but he walked with doubtful steps, like a man who does
+not know where he is going.  Presently he stopped, and, leaning his arms
+on the parapet, watched the sombre, rapidly flowing Seine, its small
+waves fringed with white foam.  The rain had ceased, but the wind blew in
+squalls, roughening the surface of the river and making the red and green
+lights of the omnibus boats sway in the darkness.  The passers-by came
+and went, and more than one examined him from the corner of the eye,
+wondering what this tall man was doing there, and if he intended to throw
+himself into the water.
+
+And why not?  What better could he do?
+
+And this was what Saniel said to himself while watching the flowing
+water.  One plunge, and he would end the fierce battle in which he had so
+madly engaged for four years, and which would in the end drive him mad.
+
+It was not the first time that this idea of ending everything had tempted
+him, and he only warded it off by constantly inventing combinations which
+it seemed to him at the moment might save him.  Why yield to such a
+temptation before trying everything?  And this was how he happened to
+appeal to Glady.  But he knew him, and knew that his avarice, about which
+every one joked, had a certain reason for its existence.  However, he
+said to himself that if the landed proprietor obstinately refused a
+friendly loan, which would only pay the debts of youth, the poet would
+willingly fill the role of Providence and save from shipwreck, without
+risking anything, a man with a future, who, later, would pay him back.
+It was with this hope that he risked a refusal.  The landed proprietor
+replied; the poet was silent.  And now there was nothing to expect from
+any one.  Glady was his last resort.
+
+In explaining his situation to Glady he lightened the misery instead of
+exaggerating it.  For it was not only his upholsterer that he owed, but
+also his tailor, his bootmaker, his coal-dealer, his concierge, and all
+those with whom he had dealings.  In reality, his creditors had not
+harassed him very much until lately, but this state of affairs would not
+last when they saw him prosecuted; they also would sue him, and how could
+he defend himself?  How should he live?  His only resource would be to
+return to the Hotel du Senat, where even they would not leave him in
+peace, or to his native town and become a country doctor.  In either case
+it was renouncing all his ambitions.  Would it not be better to die?
+
+What good was life if his dreams were not realized--if he had nothing
+that he wanted?
+
+Like many who frequently come in contact with death, life in itself was a
+small thing to him--his own life as well as that of others; with Hamlet
+he said: "To die, to sleep, no more," but without adding: "To die, to
+sleep, perchance to dream," feeling certain that the dead do not dream;
+and what is better than sleep to those who have had a hard life?
+
+He was absorbed in thought when something came between him and the
+flaring gaslight, and threw a shadow over him that made him straighten
+himself up.  What was it?  Only a policeman, who came and leaned against
+the parapet near him.
+
+He understood.  His attitude was that of a man who contemplates throwing
+himself into the river, and the policeman had placed himself there in
+order to prevent it.
+
+"Thanks!"  he said to the astonished man.
+
+He continued his way, walking quickly, but hearing distinctly the steps
+of the policeman following him, who evidently took him for a madman who
+must be watched.
+
+When he left the bridge of Saints-Peres for the Place du Carrousel this
+surveillance ceased, and he could then indulge freely in reflection--at
+least as freely as his trouble and discouragement permitted.
+
+"The weak kill themselves; the strong fight to their last breath."
+
+And, low as he was, he was not yet at his last breath.
+
+When he decided to appeal to Glady he had hesitated between him and a
+usurer named Caffie, whom he did not know personally, but whom he had
+heard spoken of as a rascal who was interested in all sorts of affairs,
+preferring the bad to the good--of successions, marriages, interdictions,
+extortions; and if he had not been to him it was for fear of being
+refused, as much as from the dread of putting himself in such hands in
+case of meeting with compliance.  But these scruples and these fears were
+useless now; since Glady failed him, cost what it might and happen what
+would, he must go to this scamp for assistance.
+
+He knew that Caffie lived in the Rue Sainte-Anne, but he did not know the
+number.  He had only to go to one of his patients, a wine-merchant in the
+Rue Therese, to find his address in the directory.  It was but a step,
+and he decided to run the risk; there was need of haste.  Discouraged by
+all the applications that he had made up to this time, disheartened by
+betrayed hopes, irritated by rebuffs, he did not deceive himself as to
+the chances of this last attempt, but at least he would try it, slight
+though the hope of success might be.
+
+It was an old house where Caffie lived, and had been formerly a private
+hotel; it was composed of two wings, one on the street, the other on an
+inside court.  A porte cochere gave access to this court, and under its
+roof, near the staircase, was the concierge's lodge.  Saniel knocked at
+the door in vain; it was locked and would not open.  He waited several
+minutes, and in his nervous impatience walked restlessly up and down the
+court.  At last an old woman appeared carrying a small wax taper.  She
+was feeble and bent, and began to excuse herself; she was alone and could
+not be everywhere at the same time, in her lodge and lighting the lamps
+on the stairways.  Caffie lived on the first floor, in the wing on the
+street.
+
+Saniel mounted the stairs and rang the bell.  A long time passed, or at
+least it seemed long to him, before there was an answer.  At last he
+heard a slow and heavy step on the tiled floor and the door was opened,
+but held by a hand and a foot.
+
+"What do you wish?"
+
+"Monsieur Caffie."
+
+"I am he.  Who are you?"
+
+"Doctor Saniel."
+
+"I have not sent for a doctor."
+
+"It is not as doctor that I am here, but as client."
+
+"This is not the hour when I receive clients."
+
+"But you are at home."
+
+"That is a fact!"
+
+And Caffie, concluding to open the door, asked Saniel to enter, and then
+closed it.
+
+"Come into my office."
+
+They were in a small room filled with papers that had only an old desk
+and three chairs for furniture; it communicated with the office of the
+business man, which was larger, but furnished with the same simplicity
+and strewn with scraps of paper that had a mouldy smell.
+
+"My clerk is ill just now," Caffie said, "and when I am alone I do not
+like to open the door."
+
+After giving this excuse he offered Saniel a chair, and, seating himself
+before his desk, lighted by a lamp from which he had taken the shade, he
+said:
+
+"Doctor, I am ready to listen to you."
+
+He replaced the shade on the lamp.
+
+Saniel made his request concisely, without the details that he had
+entered into with Glady.  He owed three thousand francs to the
+upholsterer who had furnished his apartment, and as he could not pay
+immediately he was in danger of being prosecuted.
+
+"Who is the upholsterer?"  Caffie asked, while holding his left jaw with
+his right hand.
+
+"Jardine, Boulevard Haussmann."
+
+"I know him.  It is his trade to take back his furniture in this way,
+after three quarters of the sum has been paid, and he has become rich at
+it.  How much money have you already paid of this ten thousand francs?"
+
+"Including the interest and what I have paid in instalments, nearly
+twelve thousand francs."
+
+"And you still owe three thousand?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That is nice."
+
+Caffie seemed full of admiration for this manner of proceeding.
+
+"What guarantee have you to offer for this loan of three thousand
+francs?"
+
+"No other than my present position, I confess, and above all, my future."
+
+At Caffie's request he explained his plans and prospects for the future,
+while the business man, with his cheek resting on his hand, listened, and
+from time to time breathed a stifled sigh, a sort of groan.
+
+"Hum! hum!"  he said when Saniel finished his explanation.  "You know,
+my dear friend, you know:
+
+     To fools alone the future's smile unchangeable appears,
+     For Friday's laughter Sunday's sun may change to bitter tears."
+
+"It is Sunday with you, my dear sir."
+
+"But I am not at the end of my life nor at the end of my energy, and I
+assure you that my energy makes me capable of many things."
+
+"I do not doubt it; I know what energy can do.  Tell a Greek who is dying
+of hunger to go to heaven and he will go
+
+          Graeculus esuriens in coelum, jusseris, ibit."
+
+"But I do not see that you have started for heaven."
+
+A smile of derision, accompanied by a grimace, crossed Caffies face.
+Before becoming the usurer of the Rue Sainte-Anne, whom every one called
+a rascal, he had been attorney in the country, deputy judge, and if
+unmerited evils had obliged him to resign and to hide the unpleasant
+circumstances in Paris, he never lost an opportunity to prove that by
+education he was far above his present position.  Finding this new client
+a man of learning, he was glad to make quotations that he thought would
+make him worthy of consideration.
+
+"It is, perhaps, because I am not Greek," Saniel replied; "but I am an
+Auvergnat, and the men of my country have great physical strength."
+
+Caffie shook his head.
+
+"My dear sir," he said, "I might as well tell you frankly that I do not
+believe the thing can be done.  I would do it myself willingly, because I
+read intelligence in your face, and resolution in your whole person,
+which inspire me with confidence in you; but I have no money to put into
+such speculations.  I can only be, as usual, a go-between--that is to
+say, I can propose the loan to one of my clients, but I do not know one
+who would be contented with the guarantee of a future that is more or
+less uncertain.  There are so many doctors in Paris who are in your
+position."
+
+Saniel rose.
+
+"Are you going?"  cried Caffie.
+
+"But--"
+
+"Sit down, my dear sir!  It is no use to throw the handle after the axe.
+You make me a proposition, and I show you the difficulties in the way,
+but I do not say there is no way to extricate you from embarrassment.
+I must look around.  I have known you only a few minutes; but it does not
+take long to appreciate a man like you, and, frankly, you inspire me with
+great interest."
+
+What did he wish?  Saniel was not simple enough to be caught by words,
+nor was he a fop who accepts with gaping mouth all the compliments
+addressed to him.  Why did he inspire a sudden interest in this man who
+had the reputation of pushing business matters to extremes?  He would
+find out.  In the mean time he would be on his guard.
+
+"I thank you for your sympathy," he said.
+
+"I shall prove to you that it is real, and that it may become useful.
+You come to me because you want three thousand francs.  I hope I may find
+them for you, and I promise to try, though it will be difficult, very
+difficult.  They will make you secure for the present.  But will they
+assure your future?  that is, will they permit you to continue the
+important works of which you have spoken to me, and on which your future
+depends?  No.  Your struggles will soon begin again.  And you must shake
+yourself clear from such cares in order to secure for yourself the
+liberty that is indispensable if you wish to advance rapidly.  And to
+obtain this freedom from cares and this liberty, I see only one way--
+you must marry."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+'TWIXT THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA
+
+Saniel, who was on his guard and expected some sort of roguery from this
+man, had not foreseen that these expressions of interest were leading up
+to a proposal of marriage, and an exclamation of surprise escaped him.
+But it was lost in the sound of the door-bell, which rang at that moment.
+
+Caffie rose.  "How disagreeable it is not to have a clerk!"  he said.
+
+He went to open the door with an eagerness that he had not shown to
+Saniel, which proved that he had no fear of admitting people when he was
+not alone.
+
+It was a clerk from the bank.
+
+"You will permit me," Caffie said, on returning to his office.  "It will
+take but an instant."
+
+The clerk took a paper from his portfolio and handed it to Caffie.
+
+Caffie drew a key from the pocket of his vest, with which he opened the
+iron safe placed behind his desk, and turning his back to Saniel and the
+clerk counted the bills which they heard rustle in his hands.  Presently
+he rose, and closing the door of the safe he placed under the lamp the
+package of bills that he had counted.  The clerk then counted them, and
+placing them in his portfolio took his leave.
+
+"Close the door when you go out," Caffie said, who was already seated in
+his arm-chair.
+
+"Do not be afraid."
+
+When the clerk was gone Caffie apologized for the interruption.
+
+"Let us continue our conversation, my dear sir.  I told you that there is
+only one way to relieve you permanently from embarrassment, and that way
+you will find is in a good marriage, that will place 'hic et nunc' a
+reasonable sum at your disposal."
+
+"But it would be folly for me to marry now, when I have no position to
+offer a wife."
+
+"And your future, of which you have just spoken with so much assurance,
+have you no faith in that?"
+
+"An absolute faith--as firm to-day as when I first began the battle of
+life, only brighter.  However, as others have not the same reasons that I
+have to hope and believe what I hope and believe, it is quite natural
+that they should feel doubts of my future.  You felt it yourself
+instantly in not finding it a good guarantee for the small loan of three
+thousand francs."
+
+"A loan and marriage are not the same thing.  A loan relieves you
+temporarily, and leaves you in a state to contract several others
+successively, which, you must acknowledge, weakens the guarantee that
+you offer.  While a marriage instantly opens to you the road that your
+ambition wishes to travel."
+
+"I have never thought of marriage."
+
+"If you should think of it?"
+
+"There must be a woman first of all."
+
+"If I should propose one, what would you say?"
+
+"But--"
+
+"You are surprised?"
+
+"I confess that I am."
+
+"My dear sir, I am the friend of my clients, and for many of them--I dare
+to say it--a father.  And having much affection for a young woman, and
+for the daughter of one of my friends, while listening to you I thought
+that one or the other might be the woman you need.  Both have fortunes,
+and both possess physical attractions that a handsome man like yourself
+has a right to demand.  And for the rest, I have their photographs, and
+you may see for yourself what they are."
+
+He opened a drawer in his desk, and took from it a package of
+photographs.  As he turned them over Saniel saw that they were all
+portraits of women.  Presently he selected two and handed them to Saniel.
+
+One represented a woman from thirty-eight to forty years, corpulent,
+robust, covered with horrible cheap jewelry that she had evidently put on
+for the purpose of being photographed.  The other was a young girl of
+about twenty years, pretty, simply and elegantly dressed, whose
+distinguished and reserved physiognomy was a strong contrast to the first
+portrait.
+
+While Saniel looked at these pictures Caffie studied him, trying to
+discover the effect they produced.
+
+"Now that you have seen them," he said, "let us talk of them a little.
+If you knew me better, my dear sir, you would know that I am frankness
+itself, and in business my principle is to tell everything, the good and
+the bad, so that my clients are responsible for the decisions they make.
+In reality, there is nothing bad about these two persons, because, if
+there were, I would not propose them to you.  But there are certain
+things that my delicacy compels me to point out to you, which I do
+frankly, feeling certain that a man like you is not the slave of narrow
+prejudices."
+
+An expression of pain passed over his face, and he clasped his jaw with
+both hands.
+
+"You suffer?"  Saniel asked.
+
+"Yes, from my teeth, cruelly.  Pardon me that I show it; I know by myself
+that nothing is more annoying than the sight of the sufferings of
+others."
+
+"At least not to doctors."
+
+"Never mind; we will return to my clients.  This one"--and he touched
+the portrait of the bejewelled woman--" is, as you have divined already,
+a widow, a very amiable widow.  Perhaps she is a little older than you
+are, but that is nothing.  Your experience must have taught you that the
+man who wishes to be loved, tenderly loved, pampered, caressed, spoiled,
+should marry a woman older than himself, who will treat him as a husband
+and as a son.  Her first husband was a careful merchant, who, had he
+lived, would have made a large fortune in the butcher business"--he
+mumbled this word instead of pronouncing it clearly--"but although he
+died just at the time when his affairs were beginning to develop, he left
+twenty thousand pounds' income to his wife.  As I have told you what is
+good, I must tell you what is to be regretted.  Carried away by gay
+companions, this intelligent man became addicted to intemperance, and
+from drinking at saloons she soon took to drinking at home, and his wife
+drank with him.  I have every reason to believe that she has reformed;
+but, if it is otherwise, you, a doctor, can easily cure her--"
+
+"You believe it?"
+
+"Without doubt.  However, if it is impossible, you need only let her
+alone, and her vice will soon carry her off; and, as the contract will be
+made according to my wishes in view of such an event, you will find
+yourself invested with a fortune and unencumbered with a wife."
+
+"And the other?"  Saniel said, who had listened silently to this curious
+explanation of the situation that Caffie made with the most perfect good-
+nature.  So grave were the circumstances that he could not help being
+amused at this diplomacy.
+
+"I expected your demand," replied the agent with a shrewd smile.  "And if
+I spoke of this amiable widow it was rather to acquit my conscience than
+with any hope of succeeding.  However free from prejudices one may be,
+one always retains a few.  I understand yours, and more than that, I
+share them.  Happily, what I am now about to tell you is something quite
+different.  Take her photograph, my dear sir, and look at it while I
+talk.  A charming face, is it not?  She has been finely educated at a
+fashionable convent.  In a word, a pearl, that you shall wear.  And now
+I must tell you the flaw, for there is one.  Who is blameless?  The
+daughter of one of our leading actresses, after leaving the convent she
+returned to live with her mother.  It was there, in this environment-
+ahem!  ahem!--that an accident happened to her.  To be brief, she has a
+sweet little child that the father would have recognized assuredly, had
+he not been already married.  But at least he has provided for its future
+by an endowment of two hundred thousand francs, in such a way that
+whoever marries the mother and legitimizes the child will enjoy the
+interest of this sum until the child's majority.  If that ever arrives--
+these little creatures are so fragile!  You being a physician, you know
+more about that than any one.  In case of an accident the father will
+inherit half the money from his son; and if it seems cruel for an own
+father to inherit from his own son, it is quite a different thing when it
+is a stranger who receives the fortune.  This is all, my dear sir,
+plainly and frankly, and I will not do you the injury to suppose that you
+do not see the advantages of what I have said to you without need of my
+insisting further.  If I have not explained clearly,"
+
+"But nothing is more clear."
+
+"--it is the fault of this pain that paralyzes me."
+
+And he groaned while holding his jaw.
+
+"You have a troublesome tooth?"  Saniel said, with the tone of a
+physician who questions a patient.
+
+"All my teeth trouble me.  To tell the truth, they are all going to
+pieces."
+
+"Have you consulted a doctor?"
+
+"Neither a doctor nor a dentist.  I have faith in medicine, of course;
+but when I consult doctors, which seldom happens, I notice that they
+think much more of their own affairs than of what I am saying, and that
+keeps me away from them.  But, my dear sir, when a client consults me, I
+put myself in his place."
+
+While he spoke, Saniel examined him, which he had not done until this
+moment, and he saw the characteristic signs of rapid consumption.  His
+clothes hung on him as if made for a man twice his size, and his face was
+red and shining, as if he were covered with a coating of cherry jelly.
+
+"Will you show me your teeth?"  he asked.  "It may be possible to relieve
+your sufferings."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+The examination did not last long.
+
+"Your mouth is often dry, is it not?"  he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are often thirsty?"
+
+"Always."
+
+"Do you sleep well?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Your sight troubles you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you a good appetite?"
+
+"Yes, I eat heartily; and the more I eat the thinner I become.  I am
+turning into a skeleton."
+
+"I see that you have scars from boils on the back of your neck."
+
+"They made me suffer enough, the rascals; but they are gone as they came.
+Hang it, one is no longer young at seventy-two years; one has small
+vexations.  They are small vexations, are they not?"
+
+"Certainly.  With some precautions and a diet that I shall prescribe, if
+you wish, you will soon be better.  I will give you a prescription that
+will relieve your toothache."
+
+"We will talk of this again, because we shall have occasion to meet if,
+as I presume, you appreciate the advantages of the proposition that I
+have made you."
+
+"I must have time to reflect."
+
+"Nothing is more reasonable.  There is no hurry."
+
+"But I am in a hurry because, if I do not pay Jardine, I shall find
+myself in the street, which would not be a position to offer to a wife."
+
+"In the street?  Oh, things will not come to such a pass as that!  What
+are the prosecutions?"
+
+"They will soon begin; Jardine has already threatened me."
+
+"They are going to begin?  Then they have not begun.  If he does, as we
+presume he will, proceed by a replevin, we shall have sufficient time
+before the judgment.  Do you owe anything to your landlord?"
+
+"The lease expired on the fifteenth."
+
+"Do not pay it."
+
+"That is easy; it is the only thing that is easy for me to do."
+
+"It is an obstacle in the way of your Jardine, and may stop him a moment.
+We can manage this way more easily.  The important thing is to warn me as
+soon as the fire begins.  'Au revoir', my dear Sir."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A CHARMING VISITOR
+
+Although Saniel had had no experience in business, he was not simple
+enough not to know that in refusing him this loan Caffie meant to make
+use of him.
+
+"It is very simple," he said to himself, as he went downstairs.  "He
+undertakes to manage my affairs, and in such a way that some day I shall
+have to save myself by marrying that charming girl.  What a scoundrel!"
+
+However, the situation was such that he was glad to avail himself of the
+assistance of this scoundrel.  At least, some time was gained, and when
+Jardine found that he was not disposed to let himself be slaughtered, he
+might accept a reasonable arrangement.  But he must manage so that Caffie
+would not prevent this arrangement.
+
+Unfortunately, he felt himself hardly capable of such manoeuvring, having
+been always straightforward, his eyes fixed on the end he wished to
+attain, and thinking only of the work through which he would attain it.
+And now he must act the part of a diplomat, submitting to craftiness and
+rogueries that were not at all in accord with his open nature.  He had
+begun by not telling Caffie, instantly, what he thought of his
+propositions; but it is more difficult to act than to control one's self,
+to speak than to be silent.
+
+What would he say, what would he do, when the time for action came?
+
+He reached his house without having decided anything, and as he passed
+before the concierge's lodge absorbed in thought, he heard some one call
+him.
+
+"Doctor, come in a moment, I beg of you."
+
+He thought some one wished to consult him, some countryman who had waited
+for his return; and, although he did not feel like listening patiently to
+idle complainings, he turned back and entered the lodge.
+
+"Some one brought this," the concierge said, handing him a paper that was
+stamped and covered with a running handwriting.  "This" was the beginning
+of the fire of which Caffie had spoken.  Without reading it, Saniel put
+it in his pocket and turned to go; but the concierge detained him.
+
+"I would like to say two words to 'monchieur le docteur' about this
+paper."
+
+"Have you read it?"
+
+"No, but I talked with the officer who gave it to me, and he told me what
+it meant.  It is unfortunate, doctor."
+
+To be pitied by his concierge!  This was too much.
+
+"It is not as he told you," he replied, haughtily.
+
+"So much the better.  I am glad for you and for me.  You can pay my
+little bill."
+
+"Give it to me."
+
+"I have given it to you twice already, but I have a copy.  Here it is."
+
+To be sued by a creditor paralyzed Saniel; he was stunned, crushed,
+humiliated, and could only answer stupidly.  Taking the bill that the
+concierge handed him, he put it in his pocket and stammered a few words.
+
+"You see, doctor, I must say what has been in my heart a long time.  You
+are my countryman, and I esteem you too much not to speak.  In taking
+your apartment and engaging your upholsterer, you did too much.  You ruin
+yourself.  Give up your apartment, and take the one opposite that costs
+less than half, and you will get on.  You will not be obliged to leave
+this quarter.  What will become of our neighbors if you leave us?  You
+are a good doctor; everybody knows it and says so.  And now, as for my
+bill, it is understood that I shall be paid first, shall I not?"
+
+"As soon as I have the money I will pay you."
+
+"It is a promise?"
+
+"I promise you."
+
+"Thank you very much."
+
+"If it could be to-morrow, it would suit me.  I am not rich, you know, but
+I have always paid the gas-bill for your experiments."
+
+With the paper in his pocket, Saniel returned to Caffie, who was just
+going out, and to whom he gave it.
+
+"I will see about it this, evening," said the man of business.  "Just now
+I am going to dinner.  Do not worry.  To-morrow I will do what is
+necessary.  Good-evening.  I am dying of hunger."
+
+But three days before, Saniel emptied his purse to soothe his upholsterer
+by an instalment as large as he was able to make it, keeping only five
+francs for himself, and with the few sous left he could not go to a
+resttaurant, not even the lowest and cheapest.  He could only buy some
+bread for his supper, and eat it while working, as he had often done
+before.
+
+But when he returned to his rooms he was not in a state of mind to write
+an article that must be delivered that evening.  Among other things that
+he had undertaken was one, and not the least fastidious, which consisted
+in giving, by correspondence, advice to the subscribers of a fashion
+magazine, or, more exactly speaking, to recommend, in the form of medical
+advice, all the cosmetics, depilatories, elixirs, dyes, essences, oils,
+creams, soaps, pomades, toothpowders, rouges, and also all the chemists'
+specialties, to which their inventors wished to give an authority that
+the public, which believes itself acute, refused to the simple
+advertisement on the last page.  With his ambition and the career before
+him, he would never have consented to carry on this correspondence under
+his own name.  He did it for a neighboring doctor, a simple man, who was
+not so cautious, and who signed his name to these letters, glad to get
+clients from any quarter.  For his trouble, Saniel took this doctor's
+place during Sunday in summer, and from time to time received a box of
+perfumery or quack medicines, which he sold at a low price when occasion
+offered.
+
+Every week he received the list of cosmetics and specialties that he must
+make use of in his correspondence, no matter how he recommended them,
+whether in answer to letters that were really addressed to him, or by
+inventing questions that gave him the opportunity to introduce them.
+
+He began to consult this list and the pile of letters from subscribers
+that the magazine had sent him, when the doorbell rang.  Perhaps it was a
+patient, the good patient whom he had expected for four years.  He left
+his desk to open the door.
+
+It was his coal man, who came with his bill.
+
+"I will stop some day when I am near you," Saniel said.  "I am in a hurry
+this evening."
+
+"And I am in a hurry, too; I must pay a large bill tomorrow, and I count
+upon having some money from you."
+
+"I have no money here."
+
+After a long talk he got rid of the man and returned to his desk.  He had
+answered but a few of the many letters when his bell rang again.  This
+time he would not open the door; it was a creditor, without doubt.  And
+he continued his correspondence.
+
+But for four years he had waited for chance to draw him a good ticket in
+the lottery of life--a rich patient afflicted with a cyst or a tumor that
+he would take to a fashionable surgeon, who would divide with him the ten
+or fifteen thousand francs that he would receive for the operation.  In
+that case he would be saved.
+
+He ran to the door.  The patient with the cyst presented himself in the
+form of a small bearded man with a red face, wearing over his vest the
+wine-merchant's apron of coarse black cloth.  In fact, it was the wine
+merchant from the corner, who, having heard of the officer's visit, came
+to ask for the payment of his bill for furnishing wine for three months.
+
+A scene similar to that which he had had with the coal merchant, but more
+violent, took place, and it was only by threatening to put him out of the
+door that Saniel got rid of the man, who went away declaring that he
+would come the next morning with an officer.
+
+Saniel returned to his work.
+
+His pen flew over the paper, when a noise made him raise his head.
+Either he had not closed the door tightly, or his servant was entering
+with his key.  What did he want?  He did not employ him all day, but only
+during his office hours, to put his rooms in order and to open the door
+for his clients.
+
+As Saniel rose to go and see who it was, there was a knock at the door.
+It was his servant, with a blank and embarrassed air.
+
+"What is the matter, Joseph?"
+
+"I thought I should find you, sir, so I came."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Joseph hesitated; then, taking courage, he said volubly, while lowering
+his eyes:
+
+"I came to ask, sir, if you will pay me my month, which expired on the
+fifteenth, because there is need of money at my house; if there was not
+need of money I would not have come.  If you wish, sir, I will release
+you--"
+
+"How?"
+
+"I will take the coat that you made me order a month ago; I am quite sure
+it is not worth what is due me, but it is always so."
+
+"Take the coat."
+
+Joseph took the coat from the wardrobe in the hall, and rolled it in a
+newspaper.
+
+"Of course you will not expect me in the morning," he said, as he put his
+key on the table.  "I must look out for another place."
+
+"Very well, I shall not expect you."
+
+"Good-evening, sir."
+
+And Joseph hurried away as quickly as possible.
+
+Left alone, Saniel did not return to his work immediately, but throwing
+himself in an armchair he cast a melancholy glance around his office and
+through the open door into the parlor.  In the faint light of the candle
+he saw the large armchairs methodically placed each side of the chimney,
+the curtains at the windows lost in shadow, and all the furniture which
+for four years had cost him so many efforts.  He had long been the
+prisoner of this Louis XIV camlet, and he was now going to be executed.
+A beautiful affair, truly, brilliant and able!  All this had been used
+only by the poor Auvergnats, without Saniel enjoying it at all, for he
+had neither the bourgeois taste for ornaments nor the desire for
+elegance.  A movement of anger and revolt against himself made him strike
+his desk with his fist.  What a fool he had been!
+
+The bell rang again.  This time, not expecting a rich patient, he would
+not open it.  After a moment a slight tap was heard on the panel.  He
+rose quickly and ran to open the door.
+
+A woman threw herself into his arms.
+
+"O my dearest!  I am so glad to find you at home!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A SWEET CONSOLER
+
+She passed her arm about him and pressed him to her, and with arms
+entwined they entered the study.
+
+"How glad I am!" she said.  "What a good idea I had!"
+
+With a quick movement she took off her long gray cloak that enveloped her
+from head to foot.
+
+"And are you glad?"  she asked, as she stood looking at him.
+
+"Can you ask that?"
+
+"Only to hear you say that you are."
+
+"Are you not my only joy, the sweet lamp that gives me light in the
+cavern where I work day and night?"
+
+"Dear Victor!"
+
+She was a tall, slender young woman with chestnut hair, whose thick curls
+clustering about her forehead almost touched her eyebrows.  Her beautiful
+eyes were dark, her nose short, while her superb teeth and rich, ruby-
+colored lips gave her the effect of a pretty doll; and she had gayety,
+playful vivacity, gracious effrontery, and a passionate caressing glance.
+Dressed extravagantly, like the Parisian woman who has not a sou, but who
+adorns everything she wears, she had an ease, a freedom, a natural
+elegance that was charming.  With this she had the voice of a child, a
+joyous laugh, and an expression of sensibility on her fresh face.
+
+"I have come to dine with you," she said, gayly, "and I am so hungry."
+
+He made a gesture that was not lost upon her.
+
+"Do I disturb you?"  she asked, uneasily.
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"Must you go out?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then why did you make a gesture that showed indifference, or, at least,
+embarrassment?"
+
+"You are mistaken, my little Phillis."
+
+"With any one else I might be mistaken, but with you it is impossible.
+You know that between us words are not necessary; that I read in your
+eyes what you would say, in your face what you think and feel.  Is it not
+always so when one loves--as I love you?"
+
+He took her in his arms and kissed her long and tenderly.  Then going to
+a chair on which he had thrown his coat, he drew from the pocket the
+bread that he had bought.
+
+"This is my dinner," he said, showing the bread.
+
+"Oh!  I must scold you.  Work is making you lose your head.  Can you not
+take time to eat?"
+
+He smiled sadly.
+
+"It is not time that I want."
+
+He fumbled in his pocket and brought out three big sous.
+
+"I cannot dine at a restaurant with six sous."
+
+She threw herself in his arms.
+
+"O dearest, forgive me!"  she cried.  "Poor, dear martyr!  Dear, great
+man!  It is I who accuse you, when I ought to embrace your knees.  And
+you do not scold me; a sad smile is your only reply.  And it is really so
+bad as that!  Nothing to eat!"
+
+"Bread is very good eating.  If I might be assured that I shall always
+have some!"
+
+"Well, to-day you shall have something more and better.  This morning,
+seeing the storm, an idea came to me associated with you.  It is quite
+natural, since you are always in my heart and in my thoughts.  I told
+mamma that if the storm continued I would dine at the pension.  You can
+imagine with what joy I listened to the wind all day, and watched the
+rain and leaves falling, arid the dead branches waving in the whirlwind.
+Thank God, the weather was bad enough for mamma to believe me safe at the
+pension; and here I am.  But we must not fast.  I shall go and buy
+something to eat, and we will play at making dinner by the fire, which
+will be far more amusing than going to a restaurant."
+
+She put on her cloak quickly.
+
+"Set the table while I make my purchases."
+
+"I have my article to finish that will be sent for at eight o'clock.
+Just think, I have three tonics to recommend, four preparations of iron,
+a dye, two capillary lotions, an opiate, and I don't know how many soaps
+and powders.  What a business!"
+
+"Very well, then, do not trouble yourself about the table; we will set it
+together when you have finished, and that will be much more amusing."
+
+"You take everything in good part."
+
+"Is it better to look on the dark side?  I shall soon return."
+
+She went to the door.
+
+"Do not be extravagant," he said.
+
+"There is no danger," she replied, striking her pocket.
+
+Then, returning to him, she embraced him passionately.
+
+"Work!"
+
+And she ran out.
+
+They had loved each other for two years.  At the time they met, Saniel
+was giving a course of lectures on anatomy at a young ladies' school just
+outside of Paris, and every time he went out there he saw a young woman
+whom he could not help noticing.  She came and went on the same trains
+that he did, and gave lessons in a rival school.  As she frequently
+carried under her arm a large cartoon, and sometimes a plaster cast, he
+concluded that she gave lessons in drawing.  At first he paid no
+attention to her.  What was she to him?  He had more important things in
+his head than women.  But little by little, and because she was reserved
+and discreet, he was struck by the vivacity and gayety of her expression.
+He really enjoyed looking at this pretty and pleasing young woman.
+However, his looks said nothing; if their eyes smiled when they met, that
+was all; they did not make each other's acquaintance.  When they left the
+train they did not notice each other; if he took the left side of the
+street, she took the other, and vice versa.  This state of things lasted
+several months without a word having been exchanged between them; in due
+time they learned each other's names and professions.  She was a
+professor of drawing, as he supposed, the daughter of an artist who had
+been dead several years, and was called Mademoiselle Phillis Cormier.
+He was a physician for whom a brilliant future was prophesied, a man of
+power, who would some day be famous; and, very naturally, their attitude
+remained the same.  There was no particular reason why it should change.
+But accident made a reason.  One summer day, at the hour when they
+ordinarily took the train back to Paris, the sky suddenly became
+overcast, and it was evident that a violent storm was approaching.
+Saniel saw Phillis hurrying to the station without an umbrella, and, as
+some friend had lent him one, he decided to speak to her for the first
+time.
+
+"It seems as if the storm would overtake us before we reach the station.
+As you have no umbrella, will you permit me to walk beside you, and to
+shelter you with mine?"
+
+She replied with a smile, and they walked side by side until the rain
+began to fall, when she drew nearer to him, and they entered the station
+talking gayly.
+
+"Your umbrella is better than Virginia's skirt," she said.
+
+"And what is Virginia's skirt?"
+
+"Have you not read Paul and Virginia?"
+
+"No."
+
+She looked at him with a mocking smile, wondering what superior men read.
+
+Not only had he not read Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's romance, nor any
+others, but he had never been in love.  He knew nothing of the affairs of
+the heart nor of the imagination.  Leisure must be had for light reading,
+and even more for love, for they require a liberty of mind and an
+independence of life that he had not.  Where could he find time to read
+novels?  When and how could he pay attention to a woman?  Those that he
+had known since his arrival in Paris had not had the slightest influence
+over him, and he retained only faint memories of them.  On the contrary,
+thinking of this walk in the rain, he remembered this young girl with a
+vividness entirely new to him.  She made a strong impression on him, and
+it remained.  He saw her again, with her smile that showed her brilliant
+teeth, he heard the music of her voice, and the bare plain that he had
+walked so many times now seemed the most beautiful country in the world
+to him.  Evidently there was a change in him; something was awakened in
+his soul; for the first time he discovered that the hollow and muscular
+conoid organ called the heart had a use besides for the circulation of
+blood.
+
+What a surprise and what a disappointment!  Was he going to be simpleton
+enough to love this young girl and entangle his life, already so hard and
+heavily weighted, with a woman?  A fine thing, truly, and nature had
+built him to play the lover!  It is true that only those who wish it fall
+in love, and he knew the power of will by experience.
+
+But he soon lost confidence in himself.  Away from Phillis he could do as
+he wished, but with her it was as she wished.  With one look she mastered
+him.  He met her, furious at the influence she exercised over him, and
+against which he had struggled since their last meeting; he left her,
+ravished at feeling how profoundly he loved her.
+
+To a man whose life had been ruled by reason and logic until this moment,
+these contradictions were exasperating; and he only excused himself for
+submitting to them by saying that they could in no way modify the line of
+conduct that he had traced out for himself, nor make him deviate from the
+road that he followed.
+
+Rich, or even with a small fortune, he might--when he was with her and in
+her power--let himself be carried away; but when he was dying of hunger
+he was not going to commit the folly of taking a wife.  What would he
+have to give her?  Misery, nothing but misery; and shame, in default of
+any other reason, would forever prevent him from offering himself to her.
+
+She was the daughter of an artist who, after years of struggle, died at
+the moment when fortune was beginning to smile upon him.  Ten years more
+of work, and he would have left his family, if not rich, at least in
+comfortable circumstances.  In reality, he left nothing but ruin.  The
+hotel he built was sold, and, after the debts were paid, nothing remained
+but some furniture.  His widow, son, and daughter must work.  The widow,
+having no trade, took in sewing; the son left college to become the clerk
+of a money-lender named Caffie; the daughter, who, happily for her, had
+learned to draw and paint under her father's direction, obtained pupils,
+and designed menacs for the stationers, and painted silk fans and boxes.
+They lived with great economy, submitting to many privations.  The
+brother, weary of his monotonous existence and of the exactions of his
+master, left them to try his fortunes in America.
+
+If Saniel ever married, which he doubted, certainly he would not marry a
+woman situated as Phillis was.
+
+This reflection was reassuring, and he was more devoted to her.  Why
+should he not enjoy the delicious pleasure of seeing her and listening to
+her?  His life was neither gay nor happy; he felt perfectly sure of
+himself, and, as he knew her now, he was also sure of her--a brave and
+honest girl.  Otherwise, how had she divined that he loved her?
+
+They continued to see each other with a pleasure that seemed equal on
+both sides, meeting in the station, arranging to take the same trains,
+and talking freely and gayly.
+
+Things went on this way until the approach of vacation, when they decided
+to take a walk after their last lesson, instead of returning immediately
+to Paris.
+
+When the day came the sun was very hot; they had walked some distance,
+when Phillis expressed a wish to rest for a few minutes.  They seated
+themselves in a shady copse, and soon found themselves in each other's
+arms.
+
+Since then Saniel had never spoken of marriage, and neither had Phillis.
+
+They loved each other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A LITTLE DINNER FOR TWO
+
+Saniel was still at work when Phillis returned.
+
+"You have not yet finished, dear?"
+
+"Give me time to cure, by correspondence, a malady that has not yielded
+to the care of ten physicians, and I am yours."
+
+In three lines he finished the letter, and left his desk.
+
+"I am ready.  What shall I do?"
+
+"Help me to take things out of my pockets."
+
+"Don't press too hard," she said as he took each parcel.
+
+At last the pockets were empty.
+
+"Where shall we dine?"  she asked.
+
+"Here, as the dining-room is transformed into a laboratory."
+
+"Then let us begin by making a good fire.  I wet my feet coming from the
+station."
+
+"I do not know whether there is any wood."
+
+"Let us see."
+
+She took the candle and they passed into the kitchen, which, like the
+dining-room, was a laboratory, a stable where Saniel kept in cages pigs
+from India and rabbits for his experiments, and where Joseph heaped pell-
+mell the things that were in his way, without paying any attention to the
+stove in which there never had been a fire.  But their search was vain;
+there was everything in this kitchen except fire-wood.
+
+"Do you value these boxes?"  she asked, caressing a little pig that she
+had taken in her arms.
+
+"Not at all; they enclosed the perfumes and tonics, but they are useless
+now."
+
+They returned to the office, Saniel carrying the boxes.
+
+"We will set the table here," she said, gayly, for Saniel told her that
+the dining-room was uninviting, as it was a small bacteriological
+laboratory.
+
+The table was set by Phillis, who went and came, walking about with a
+gracefulness that Saniel admired.
+
+"You are doing nothing," she said.
+
+"I am watching you and thinking."
+
+"And the result of these thoughts?"
+
+"It is that you have a fund of good-humor and gayety, an exuberance of
+life, that would enliven a man condemned to death."
+
+"And what would have become of us, I should like to know, if I had been
+melancholy and discouraged when we lost my poor papa?  He was joy itself,
+singing all day long, laughing and joking.  He brought me up, and I am
+like him.  Mamma, as you know, is melancholy and nervous, looking on the
+dark side, and Florentin is like her.  I obtained a place for Florentin,
+I found work for mamma and for myself.  We all took courage, and
+gradually we became calm."
+
+She looked at him with a smile that said:
+
+"Will you let me do for you what I have done for others?"
+
+But she did not speak these words.  On the contrary, she immediately
+endeavored to destroy the impression which she believed her words had
+made upon him.
+
+"Go and bring some water," she said, "and I will light the fire."
+
+When he returned, carrying a carafe, the fire blazed brightly, lighting
+the whole room.  Phillis was seated at the desk, writing.
+
+"What are you doing?"  he asked in surprise.
+
+"I am writing our menu, for you know we are not going to sit down at the
+table like the bourgeois.  How do you like it?"
+
+She read it to him.
+
+"Sardines de Nantes."
+
+"Cuisse de dinde rotie."
+
+"Terrine de pate de foie gras aux truffes du Perigord."
+
+"But this is a feast."
+
+"Did you think that I would offer you a fricandeau au jus?"
+
+She continued:
+
+"Fromage de Brie."
+
+"Choux a la creme vanillge."
+
+"Pomme de Normandie."
+
+"Wine."
+
+"Ah!  Voila!  What wine?  I do not wish to deceive you.  Let us put,
+'Wine from the wine-seller at the corner.' And now we will sit down."
+
+As he was about to seat himself, she said:
+
+"You do not give me your arm to conduct me to the table.  If we do not do
+things seriously and methodically we shall not believe in them, and
+perhaps the Perigord truffles will change into little black pieces of
+anything else."
+
+When they were seated opposite to each other, she continued, jesting:
+
+"My dear doctor, did you go to the representation of Don Juan, on
+Monday?"
+
+And Saniel, who, in spite of all, had kept a sober face, now laughed
+loudly.
+
+"Charming!" she cried, clapping her hands.  "No more preoccupation; no
+more cares.  Look into my eyes, dear Victor, and think only of the
+present hour, of the joy of being together, of our love."
+
+She reached her hand over the table, and he pressed it in his.
+
+"Very well."  The dinner continued gayly, Saniel replying to Phillis's
+smiles, who would not permit the conversation to languish.  She helped
+him to each dish, poured out his wine, leaving her chair occasionally to
+put a piece of wood on the fire, and such shoutings and laughter had
+never been heard before in that office.
+
+However, she noticed that, little by little, Saniel's face, that relaxed
+one moment, was the next clouded by the preoccupation and bitterness that
+she had tried hard to chase away.  She would make a new effort.
+
+"Does not this charming little dinner give you the wish to repeat it?"
+
+"How?  Where?"
+
+"As I am able to come this evening without making mamma uneasy, I shall
+find some excuse to come again next week."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Have you engagements for the whole of next week?"  she asked with
+uneasiness.
+
+"Where shall I be next week, to-morrow, in a few days?"
+
+"You alarm me.  Explain, I beg of you.  O Victor, have pity!  Do not
+leave me in suspense."
+
+"You are right; I ought to tell you everything, and not let your tender
+heart torment itself, trying to explain my preoccupation."
+
+"If you have cares, do you not esteem me enough to let me share them with
+you?  You know that I love you; you only, to-day, to-morrow, forever!"
+
+Saniel had not left her ignorant of the difficulties of his position, but
+he had not entered into details, preferring to speak of his hopes rather
+than of his present misery.
+
+The story that he had already told to Glady and Caffie he now told to
+Phillis, adding what had passed with the concierge, the wine-seller, the
+coal man, and Joseph.
+
+She listened, stupefied.
+
+"He took your coat?"  she murmured.
+
+"That was what he came for."
+
+"And to-morrow?"
+
+"Ah! to-morrow--to-morrow!"
+
+"Working so hard as you have, how did you come to such a pass?"
+
+"Like you, I believed in the virtue of work, and look at me!  Because I
+felt within me a will that nothing could weaken, a strength that nothing
+could fatigue, a courage that nothing could, dishearten, I imagined that
+I was armed for battle in such a way that I should never be conquered,
+and I am conquered, as much by the fault of circumstances as by my own--"
+
+"And in what are you to blame, poor dear?"
+
+"For my ignorance of life, stupidity, presumption, and blindness.
+If I had been less simple, should I have been taken in by Jardine's
+propositions?  Should I have accepted this furniture, this apartment?
+He told me that the papers he made me sign were mere formalities, that
+in reality I might pay when I could, and that he would be content with
+a fair interest.  That seemed reasonable, and, without inquiring further,
+I accepted, happy and delighted to have a home, feeling sure of having
+strength to bear this burden.  To have confidence in one's self is
+strength, but it is also weakness.  Because you love me you do not know
+me; you do not see me as I am.  In reality, I am not sociable, and I
+lack, absolutely, suppleness, delicacy, politeness, as much in my
+character as in my manners.  Being so, how can I obtain a large practice,
+or succeed, unless it is by some stroke of luck?  I have counted on the
+luck, but its hour has not yet sounded.  Because I lack suppleness I have
+not been able to win the sympathy or interest of my masters.  They see
+only my reserve; and because I stay away from them, as much through
+timidity as pride, they do not come to me--which is quite natural, I
+admit.  And because I have not yielded my ideas to the authority of
+others, they have taken a dislike to me, which is still more natural.
+Because I lack politeness, and am still an Auvergnat, heavy and awkward
+as nature made me, men of the world disdain me, judging me by my
+exterior, which they see and dislike.  More wary, more sly, more
+experienced, I should be, at least, sustained by friendship, but I have
+given no thought to it.  What good is it?  I had no need of it, my force
+was sufficient.  I find it more easy to make myself feared than loved.
+Thus formed, there are only two things for me to do: remain in my poor
+room in the Hotel du Senat, living by giving lessons and by work from the
+booksellers, until the examination and admission to the central bureau;
+or to establish myself in an out-of-the-way quarter at Belleville,
+Montrouge, or elsewhere, and there practise among people who will demand
+neither politeness nor fine manners.  As these two ways are reasonable,
+I have made up my mind to neither.  Belleville, because I should work
+only with my legs, like one of my comrades whom I saw work at Villette:
+'Your tongue, good.  Your arm, good.' And while he is supposed to be
+feeling the pulse of the patient with one hand, with the other he is
+writing his prescription: 'Vomitive, purgative, forty sous;' and he
+hurries away, his diagnosis having taken less than five minutes; he had
+no time to waste.  I object to the Hotel du Senat because I have had
+enough of it, and it was there that Jardine tempted me with his
+proposals.  See what he has brought me to!"
+
+"And now?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+EXPLANATIONS
+
+At this moment, without warning, the candle on the table went out.
+
+Phillis rose.  "Where are the candles?"  she asked.
+
+"There are no more; this was the last."
+
+"Then we must brighten up the fire."
+
+She threw a small log on the hearth, and then, instead of resuming her
+seat, she took a cushion from the sofa, and placing it before the
+chimney, threw herself upon it, and leaned her elbow on Saniel's knee.
+
+"And now?"  she repeated, her eyes raised to his.
+
+"Now I suppose the only thing for me to do is to return to Auvergne and
+become a country doctor."
+
+"My God! is it possible?" she murmured in a tone that surprised Saniel.
+If there was sadness in this cry, there was also a sentiment that he did
+not understand.
+
+"On leaving the school I could continue to live at the Hotel du Senat,
+and, while giving lessons, prepare my 'concours'; now, after having
+reached a certain position, can I return to this life of poverty and
+study?  My creditors, who have fallen on me here, will harass me, and my
+competitors will mock my misery--which is caused by my vices.  They will
+think that I dishonor the Faculty, and I shall be rebuffed.  Neither
+doctor of the hospitals nor fellow, I shall be reduced to nothing but a
+doctor of the quarter.  Of what use is it?  The effort has been made
+here; you see how it has succeeded."
+
+"Then you mean to go?"
+
+"Not without sorrow and despair, since it will be our separation, the
+renouncement of all the hopes on which I have lived for ten years, the
+abandonment of my work, death itself.  You see now why, in spite of your
+gayety, I have not been able to hide my preoccupation from you.  The more
+charming you were, the more I felt how dear you are, and the greater my
+despair at the thought of separation."
+
+"Why should we separate?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+She turned toward him.
+
+"To go with you.  You must acknowledge that until this moment I have
+never spoken to you of marriage, and never have I let the thought appear
+that you might one day make me your wife.  In your position, in the
+struggle you have been through, a wife would have been a burden that
+would have paralyzed you; above all, such a poor, miserable creature as
+myself, with no dot but her misery and that of her family.  But the
+conditions are no longer the same.  You are as miserable as I am, and
+more desperate.  In your own country, where you have only distant
+relatives who are nothing to you, as they have not your education or
+ideas, desires or habits, what will become of you all alone with your 158
+disappointment and regrets?  If you accept me, I will go with you;
+together, and loving each other, we cannot be unhappy anywhere.  When you
+come home fatigued you will find me with a smile; when you stay at home
+you will tell me your thoughts, and explain your work, and I will try to
+understand.  I have no fear of poverty, you know, and neither do I fear
+solitude.  Wherever we are together I shall be happy.  All that I ask of
+you is to take my mother with us, because you know I cannot leave her
+alone.  In attending her, you have learned to know her well enough to
+know that she is not disagreeable or difficult to please.  As for
+Florentin, he will remain in Paris and work.  His trip to America has
+made him wise, and his ambition will now be easily satisfied; to earn a
+small salary is all that he asks.  Without doubt we shall be a burden,
+but not so heavy as one might think at first.  A woman, when she chooses,
+brings order and economy into a house, and I promise you that I will be
+that woman.  And then I will work.  I am sure my stationer will give me
+as many menus when I am in Auvergne as he does now that I am in Paris.
+I could, also, without doubt, procure other work.  It would be a hundred
+francs a month, perhaps a hundred and fifty, perhaps even two hundred.
+While waiting for your patients to come, we could live on this money.
+In Auvergne living must be cheap."
+
+She had taken his hands in hers, and she watched anxiously his face as
+the firelight shone on it, to see the effect of her words.  It was the
+life of both of them that was to be decided, and the fulness of her heart
+made her voice tremble.  What would he reply?  She saw that his face was
+agitated, without being able to read more.
+
+As she remained silent, he took her head in his hands, and looked in her
+face for several moments.
+
+"How you love me!"  he said.
+
+"Let me prove it in some way besides in words."
+
+"It would be cowardly to let you share my misery."
+
+"It would be loving me enough to feel sure that I would be happy."
+
+"And I?"
+
+"Is not the love in your heart greater than pride?  Do you not feel that
+since I have loved you my love has filled all my life, and that there is
+nothing in the world, in the present or in the future, but it and you?
+Because I see you for several hours from time to time in Paris, I am
+happy; whatever difficulties await us, I should be much happier in
+Auvergne, because we should be together always."
+
+He remained silent for some time.
+
+"Could you love me there?"  he murmured.
+
+Evidently it was more to himself than to her that he addressed this
+question, which was the sum of his reflections.
+
+"O dear Victor!"  she cried.  "Why do you doubt me?  Have I deserved it?
+The past, the present, do they not assure the future?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"The man you have loved, whom you love, has never shown himself to you as
+he really is.  In spite of the trials and sorrows of his life he has been
+able to answer your smile with a smile, because, cruel as his life was,
+he was sustained by hope and confidence; in Auvergne there will be no
+more hope or confidence, but the madness of a broken life, and the
+dejection of impotence.  What sort of man should I be?  Could you love
+such a man?"
+
+"A thousand times more, for he would be unhappy, and I should have to
+comfort him."
+
+"Would you have the strength to do it?  After a time you would become
+weary, for the burden would be too heavy, however great your devotion or
+profound your tenderness, to see my real position and my hopes, and,
+descending into the future, to see my ruin.  You know I am ambitious
+without having ever compassed the scope of this ambition, and of the
+hopes, dreams if you like, on which it rests.  Understand that these
+dreams are on the eve of being realized; two months more, and in December
+or January I pass the 'concours' for the central bureau, which will make
+me a physician of the hospitals, and at the same time the one for the
+admission, which opens the Faculty of Medicine to me.  Without pride, I
+believe myself in a position to succeed--what sportsmen call 'in
+condition.' And just when I have only a few days to wait, behold me
+ruined forever."
+
+"Why forever?"
+
+"A man leaves his village for Paris to make a name for himself, and he
+returns only when bad luck or inability sends him back.  And then it is
+only every four years that there is a 'concours' for admission.  In four
+years what will be my moral and intellectual condition?  How should I
+support this exile of four years?  Imagine the effect that four years of
+isolation in the mountains will produce.  But this is not all.  Besides
+this ostensible end that I have pursued since I left my village, I have
+my special work that I can carry out only in Paris.  Without having
+overwhelmed you with the details of medicine, you know that it is about
+to undergo a revolution that will transform it.  Until now it has been
+taught officially, in pathology, that the human organism carries within
+itself the germ of a great many infectious diseases which develop
+spontaneously in certain conditions; for instance, that tuberculosis is
+the result of fatigue, privations, and physiological miseries.  Well,
+recently it has been admitted, that is to say, the revolutionists admit,
+a parasitical origin for these diseases, and in France and Germany there
+is an army looking for these parasites.  I am a soldier in this army, and
+to help me in these researches I established a laboratory in the dining-
+room.  It is to the parasites of tuberculosis and cancers that I devote
+myself, and for seven years, that is, since I was house-surgeon, my
+comrades have called me the cancer topic.  I have discovered the parasite
+of the tuberculosis, but I have not yet been able to free it from all its
+impurities by the process of culture.  I am still at it.  That is to say,
+I am very near it, and to-morrow, perhaps, or in a few days, I may make a
+discovery that will be a revolution, and cover its discoverer with glory.
+The same with the cancer.  I have found its microbe.  But all is not
+done.  See what I must give up in leaving Paris."
+
+"Why give all this up?  Could you not continue your researches in
+Auvergne?"
+
+"It is impossible, for many reasons that are too long to explain, but one
+will suffice.  The culture of these parasites can be done only in certain
+temperatures rigorously maintained at the necessary degree, and these
+temperatures can be obtained only by stoves, like the one in my
+laboratory, fed by gas, the entrance of which is automatically regulated
+by the temperature of the water.  How could I use this stove in a country
+where there is no gas?  No, no!  If I leave Paris, everything is at an
+end my position, as well as my work.  I shall become a country doctor,
+and nothing but a country doctor.  Let the sheriff turn me out to-morrow,
+and all the four years' accumulations in my laboratory, all my works en
+train that demand only a few days or hours to complete, may go to the
+second-hand dealer, or be thrown into the street.  Of all my efforts,
+weary nights, privations, and hopes, there remains only one souvenir--for
+me.  And yet, if it did not remain, perhaps I should be less exasperated,
+and should accept with a heart less sore the life to which I shall never
+resign myself.  You know very well that I am a rebel, and do not submit
+tamely."
+
+She rose, and taking his hand, pressed it closely in her own.
+
+"You must stay in Paris," she said.  "Pardon me for having insisted that
+you could live in the country.  I thought more of myself than of you, of
+our love and our marriage.  It was an egotistic thought, a bad thought.
+A way must be found, no matter what it costs, to enable you to continue
+your work."
+
+"But how to find it?  Do you think I have not tried everything?"
+
+He related his visits to Jardine, his solicitations, prayers, and also
+his request of a loan from Glady, and his visit to Caffie.
+
+"Caffie!"  she cried.  "What made you think of going to Caffie?"
+
+"I went partly because you had often spoken of him."
+
+"But I spoke of him to you as the most wicked of men, capable of anything
+and everything that is bad."
+
+"And partly, also, because I knew from one of my patients that he lends
+to those of whom he can make use."
+
+"What did he say to you?"
+
+"That it was probable he would not be able to find any one who would lend
+what I wished, but he would try to find some one, and would give me an
+answer tomorrow evening.  He also promised to protect me from Jardine."
+
+"You have put yourself in his hands?"
+
+"Well, what do you expect?  In my position, I am not at liberty to go to
+whom I wish and to those who inspire me with confidence in their honor.
+If I should go to a notary or a banker they would not listen to me, for I
+should be obliged to tell them, the first thing, that I have no security
+to offer.  That is how the unfortunate fall into the hands of rascals; at
+least, these listen to them, and lend them something, small though it may
+be."
+
+"What did he give you?"
+
+"Advice."
+
+"And you took it?"
+
+"There is time gained.  To-morrow, perhaps, I shall be turned into the
+street.  Caffie will obtain a respite."
+
+"And what price will he ask for this service?"
+
+"It is only those who own something who worry about the price."
+
+"You have your name, dignity, and honor, and once you are in Caffies
+hands, who knows what he may exact from you, what he may make you do,
+without your being able to resist him?."
+
+"Then you wish me to leave Paris?"
+
+"Certainly not; but I wish you to be on your guard against Caffie, whom
+you do not know, but I do, through what Florentin told us when he was
+with him.  However secret a man may be, he cannot hide himself from his
+clerk.  He is not only guilty of rascalities, but also of real crimes.
+I assure you that he deserves ten deaths.  To gain a hundred francs he
+will do anything; he makes money only for the pleasure of making it, for
+he has neither child nor relative."
+
+"Well, I promise to be on my guard as you advise.  But, wicked as Caffie
+may be, I believe that I shall accept the concours that he offered me.
+Who knows what may happen in the short time that he gains for me?
+Because I need not tell you that I know beforehand what his reply will be
+to my request for a loan--he could find no one."
+
+"I shall come, all the same, to-morrow evening to learn his answer."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CAFFIE'S ANSWER
+
+Although Saniel did not build any false hopes on Caffie's reply, he went
+to see him the next afternoon at the same hour.
+
+As before, he waited some time after ringing the bell.  At last he heard
+a slow step within.
+
+"Who is there?"  Caffie asked.
+
+As soon as Saniel answered, the door was opened.
+
+"As I do not like to be disturbed in the evening by troublesome people, I
+do not always open the door," Caffie said.  "But I have a signal for my
+clients so that I may know them.  After ringing, knock three times on the
+door."
+
+During this explanation they entered Caffie's office.
+
+"Have you done anything about my affair?"  Saniel asked, after a moment,
+as Caffie seemed disinclined to open the conversation.
+
+"Yes, my dear sir.  I have been running about all the morning for you.
+I never neglect my clients; their affairs are mine."
+
+He paused.
+
+"Well?"  Saniel said.
+
+Caffie put on an expression of despair.
+
+"What did I tell you, my dear sir?  Do you remember?  Do me the honor to
+believe that a man of my experience does not speak lightly.  What I
+foresaw has come to pass.  Everywhere I received the same reply.  The
+risk is too great; no one would take it."
+
+"Not even for a large interest?"
+
+"Not even for a large interest; there is so much competition in your
+profession.  As for me, I believe in your future, and I have proved it by
+my proposition; but, unfortunately, I am only an intermediary, and not
+the lender of money."
+
+Caffie emphasized the words, "my proposition," and underlined them with a
+glance; but Saniel did not appear to understand.
+
+"And the upholsterer's summons?"  he asked.
+
+"You may be easy on that point.  I have attended to it.  Your landlord,
+to whom he owes rent, will interfere, and your creditor must indemnify
+him before going farther.  Will he submit?  We shall see.  If he does, we
+shall defend ourselves on some other ground.  I do not say victoriously,
+but in a way to gain time."
+
+"How much time?"
+
+"That, my dear sir, I do not know; the whole thing depends upon our
+adversary.  But what do you mean by 'how much time?'--eternity?"
+
+"I mean until April."
+
+"That is eternity.  Do you believe that you will be able to free yourself
+in April?  If you have expectations founded on something substantial, you
+should tell me what they are, my dear sir."
+
+This question was put with such an air of benevolence, that Saniel was
+taken in by it.
+
+"I have no guarantee," he said.  "But, on the other hand, it is of the
+utmost importance to me that I should have this length of time.  As I
+have explained to you, I am about to pass two examinations; they will
+last three months, and in March, or, at the latest, in April, I shall be
+a physician of the hospitals, and fellow of the Faculty.  In that case I
+should then offer a surface to the lenders, that would permit you,
+without doubt, to find the sum necessary to pay Jardine, whatever
+expenses there may be, and your fee."
+
+As he spoke, Saniel saw that he was wrong in thus committing himself, but
+he continued to the end.
+
+"I should be unworthy of your confidence, my dear sir," Caffie replied,
+"if I encouraged you with the idea that we could gain so much time.
+Whatever it costs me--and it costs me much, I assure you--I must tell you
+that it is impossible, radically impossible; a few days, yes, or a few
+weeks, but that is all."
+
+"Well, obtain a few weeks," Saniel said, rising, "that will be
+something."
+
+"And afterward?"
+
+"We shall see."
+
+"My dear sir, do not go.  You would not believe how much I am touched by
+your position; I think only of you.  When I learned that I could not find
+the sum you desire, I paid a friendly visit to my young client of whom I
+spoke to you--"
+
+"The one who received a superior education in a fashionable convent?"
+
+"Exactly; and I asked her what she would think of a young doctor, full of
+talent, future professor of the Faculty, actually considered already a
+savant of the first order, handsome--because you are handsome, my dear
+sir, and it is no flattery to say this--in good health, a peasant by
+birth, who presented himself as a husband.  She appeared flattered, I
+tell you frankly.  But immediately afterward she said, 'And the child?'
+To which I replied that you were too good, too noble, too generous, not
+to have the indulgence of superior men, who accept an involuntary fault
+with serenity.  Did I go too far?"
+
+He did not wait for an answer.
+
+"No?"  he went on.  "Exactly.  The child was present, for the mother
+watches over it with a solicitude that promises much for the future, and
+I examined it leisurely.  It is very delicate, my dear sir, and like its
+father.  The poor baby!  I doubt if you, with all your skill, can make it
+live.  If it should die, as it is to be feared it will, it would not
+injure your reputation.  You can give it care, but not life."
+
+"Speaking of health," interrupted Saniel, who did not wish to reply, "did
+you do what I advised about yourself?"
+
+"Not yet.  The chemists of this quarter are only licensed cutthroats; but
+I am going this evening to see one of my clients who is a chemist, and he
+will deal honestly with me."
+
+"I will see you again, then."
+
+"When you wish, my dear sir; when you have reflected.  You have the
+password."
+
+Before leaving home Saniel gave his key to the concierge, so that on her
+arrival Phillis might go immediately to his rooms.  On his return the
+concierge told him that "madame" was up-stairs, and when he rang the
+bell, Phillis opened the door.
+
+"Well?"  she asked in a trembling voice, before he had time to enter.
+
+"It is as I told you yesterday; he has found no one."
+
+She clasped him in a long, passionate embrace.
+
+"And the upholsterer?"
+
+"Caffie has promised to gain some time for me."
+
+While speaking, they entered the office.  A fire burned on the hearth,
+and an inviting dinner was on the table.  Saniel looked at it in
+surprise.
+
+"I have set the table, you see; I am going to dine with you."
+
+And throwing herself in his arms:
+
+"Knowing Caffie better than you do, I knew what his answer would be, and
+I did not wish you to be alone on your return.  I made an excuse for not
+dining with mamma."
+
+"But this chicken?"
+
+"We must have a piece de resistance."
+
+"This fire, and these candles?"
+
+"There, that is the end of my economies.  I should have been so happy if
+they had been less miserable and more useful."
+
+As on the previous evening, they sat before the fire, and she began to
+talk of various things in order to distract him.  But what their lips did
+not say, their eyes, on meeting, expressed with more intensity than words
+could do.
+
+It was Saniel who suddenly betrayed his preoccupation.
+
+"Your brother studied Caffie well," he said, as if speaking to himself.
+
+"He did, indeed!"
+
+"He is certainly the most thorough rascal that I have ever met."
+
+"He proposed something infamous, I am sure."
+
+"He proposed that I should marry."
+
+"I suspected that."
+
+"This is the reason why he refuses to lend me the money.  I was foolish
+enough to tell him frankly just how I am situated, and how important it
+is for me to be free until April.  He hopes that I shall be so pushed
+that I will accept one of the women whom he has proposed to me.  With the
+knife at my throat, I should have to yield."
+
+"And these women?"  she asked, not daring to look at him.
+
+"Do not be alarmed, you have nothing to fear.  One is the drunken widow
+of a butcher, and the other is a young girl who has a baby."
+
+"He dares to propose such women to a man like you!"
+
+And Saniel repeated all that Caffie had said to him about these two
+women.
+
+"What a monster he is!"  Phillis said.
+
+"While he was telling me these things I thought of what you said--that if
+some one killed him, it would be no more than he deserved."
+
+"That is perfectly true."
+
+"Nothing would have been easier than for me to have made away with him.
+He had the toothache, and when he showed me his teeth I could easily have
+strangled him.  We were alone, and a miserable diabetic, such as he is,
+who has not more than six months to live, I am sure, could not have
+resisted a grasp like this.  I could take his keys from his pocket, open
+his safe, and take the thirty, forty, sixty thousand francs that I saw
+heaped up there.  The devil take me if it were ever discovered.  A doctor
+does not strangle his patients, he poisons them.  He kills them
+scientifically, not brutally."
+
+"People who have no conscience can do such things; but for us they are
+impossible."
+
+"I assure you it is not conscience that would have restrained me."
+
+"The fear of remorse, if I may use an ugly word."
+
+"But intelligent persons have no remorse, my dear child, because they
+reason before the deed, and not after.  Before acting they weigh the pros
+and cons, and know what the consequences of their actions will be to
+others as well as to themselves.  If this previous examination proves to
+them that for some reason or other they may act, they will always be
+calm, assured that they will feel no remorse, which is only the reproach
+of conscience."
+
+"Without doubt what you say is to the point, but it is impossible for me
+to accept it.  If I have never committed crimes, I have often been
+foolish and have committed faults, many of them deliberately, after the
+examination of which you speak.  I should have been, according to you,
+perfectly placid and free from the reproach of conscience; however, the
+next morning I woke unhappy, tormented, often overwhelmed, and unable to
+stifle the mysterious voice that accused me."
+
+"And in whose name did it speak, this voice, more vague than mysterious?"
+
+"In the name of my conscience, evidently."
+
+"'Evidently' is too much, and you would be puzzled if called upon to
+demonstrate this evidence; whereas, nothing is more uncertain and elusive
+than the thing that is called conscience, which is in reality only an
+affair of environment and of education."
+
+"I do not understand."
+
+"Does your conscience tell you it is a crime to love me?"
+
+"No, decidedly."
+
+"You see, then, that you have a personal way of understanding what is
+good and bad, which is not that of our country, where it is admitted,
+from the religious and from the social point of view, that a young girl
+is guilty when she has a lover.  Of course, you see, also, that
+conscience is a bad weighing-machine, since each one, in order to make it
+work, uses a weight that he has himself manufactured."
+
+"However it is, you did right not to strangle Cafflie."
+
+"Whom you, yourself, have condemned to death."
+
+"By the hand of justice, whether human or divine; but not by yours, any
+more than by Florentin's or mine, although we know better than any one
+that he does not deserve any mercy."
+
+"And you see I foresaw your objections, as I did not tighten his cravat."
+
+"Happily."
+
+"Is it necessary to say 'happily'?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+SANIEL MAKES A RESOLUTION
+
+This evening Phillis was obliged to be at home early, but she cleared off
+the table, and put everything in order before leaving.
+
+"You can breakfast on the remains of the chicken," she said, as she put
+it in the pantry.
+
+And as Saniel accompanied her with a candle in his hand, he saw that she
+had thought not only of his breakfast for the following day, but for many
+days, besides carrots for the rabbits.
+
+"What a good heart you have!"  he said.
+
+"Because I think of the rabbits?"
+
+"Because of your tenderness and thoughtfulness."
+
+"I wish I could do something for you!"
+
+As soon as she was gone he seated himself at his desk and began to work,
+anxious to make up for the time that he had given to sentiment.  The fact
+that his work might not be of use to him, and that his experiments might
+be rudely interrupted the next morning or in a few days, was not a
+sufficient reason for being idle.  He had work to do, and he worked as if
+with the certitude that he would pass his examinations, and that his
+experiments of four years past would have a good ending, without
+interference from any one.
+
+This was his strong point, this power to work, that was never disturbed
+or weakened by anything; not by pleasure or pain, by preoccupation or by
+misery.  In the street he could think of Phillis, be he hungry or sleepy;
+at his desk he had no thought of Phillis, neither of hunger nor of sleep,
+no cares, no memories; his work occupied him entirely.
+
+It was his strength, and also his pride, the only superiority of which he
+boasted; for although he knew that he had others, he never spoke of them,
+while he often said to his comrades:
+
+"I work when I will and as much as I wish.  My will never weakens when I
+am at work."
+
+This evening he worked for about an hour, in his usual condition of mind;
+neither sheriffs, nor Jardine, nor Caffie troubled him.  But having to
+draw upon his memory for certain facts, he found that it did not obey him
+as usual; there were a hesitation, a fogginess, above all, extraordinary
+wanderings.  He wrestled with it and it obeyed, but only for a short
+time, and soon again it betrayed him a second time, then a third and
+fourth time.
+
+Decidedly he was not in a normal state, and his will obeyed in place of
+commanding.
+
+There were a name and a phrase that recurred to him mechanically from
+time to time.  The name was Caffie, and the phrase was, "Nothing easier."
+
+Why should this hypothesis to strangle Caffie, of which he had lightly
+spoken, and to which he had attached no importance at the moment when he
+uttered it, return to him in this way as a sort of obsession?
+
+Was it not strange?
+
+Never, until this day, had he had an idea that he could strangle a man,
+even as wicked as this one, and yet, in talking of it, he found very
+natural and legitimate reasons for the murder of this scamp.
+
+Had not Phillis herself condemned him?
+
+To tell the truth, she had added that Providence or justice should be his
+executor, but this was the scruple of a simple conscience, formed in a
+narrow environment, to which influence he would not submit.
+
+Had he these scruples, this old man who coldly, and merely for the
+interest of so much a hundred on a dot, advised him to hasten the death
+of a woman by drunkenness, and that of an infant in any way he pleased?
+
+When he reached this conclusion he stopped, and asked himself whether he
+were mad to pursue this idea; then immediately, to get rid of it, he set
+to work, which absorbed him for a certain time, but not so long a time as
+at first.
+
+Then, finding that he could not control his will, he turned his thoughts
+to Caffie.
+
+It was only too evident that if he had carried out the idea of strangling
+Caffie, all the difficulties against which he had struggled, and which
+would overwhelm him, if not the following day, at least in a few days,
+would have disappeared immediately.
+
+No more sheriffs, no more creditors.  What a deliverance!
+
+Repose, the possibility of passing examinations with a calm spirit that
+the fever of material troubles would not disturb--in this condition he
+felt his success was assured.
+
+And his experiments!  He would run no danger of seeing them rudely
+interrupted.  His preparations were not cast out-of-doors; his precious
+culture-tubes were not broken; his vases, his balloons, were not at the
+second-hand dealer's.  He continued this train of thought to the results
+that he desired for him, glory; for humanity, the cure of one, and
+perhaps two, of the most terrible maladies with which it was afflicted.
+
+The question was simple:
+
+On one side, Caffie;
+
+On the other side, humanity and science;
+
+An old rascal who deserved twenty deaths, and who would, anyhow, die
+naturally in a short time;
+
+And humanity, science, which would profit by a discovery of which he
+would be the author.
+
+He saw that the perspiration stood out on his hands, and he felt it run
+down his neck.
+
+Why this weakness?  From horror of the crime, the possibility of which he
+admitted?  Or from fear of seeing his experiments destroyed?
+
+He would reflect, think about it, be upon his guard.
+
+He had told Phillis that intelligent men, before engaging in an action,
+weigh the pro and con.
+
+Against Caffie's death he saw nothing.
+
+For, on the contrary, everything combined.
+
+If he had had Phillis's scruples, or Brigard's beliefs, he would have
+stopped.
+
+But, not having them, would he not be silly to draw back?
+
+Before what should he shrink?  Why should he stop?
+
+Remorse?  But he was convinced that intelligent men had no remorse when
+they came to a decision on good grounds.  It was before that they felt
+remorse, not after; and he was exactly in this period of before.
+
+Fear of being arrested?  But intelligent men do not let themselves be
+arrested.  Those who are lost are brutes who go straight ahead, or the
+half-intelligent, who use their skill and cunning to combine a
+complicated or romantic act, in which their hand is plainly seen.  As for
+him, he was a man of science and precision, and he would not compromise
+himself by act or sentiment; there would be nothing to fear during the
+action, and nothing afterward.  Caffie strangled, suspicion would not
+fall upon a doctor, but on a brute.  When doctors wish to kill any one,
+they do it learnedly, by poison or by some scientific method.  Brutal men
+kill brutally; murder, called the assassin's profession.
+
+A few minutes before, he was inundated by perspiration; this word froze
+him.
+
+He rose nervously, and walked up and down the room with long, unsteady
+steps.  The fire had long since gone out; out-of-doors the street noises
+had ceased, and in his brain resounded the one word that he pronounced in
+a low tone, "Assassin!"
+
+Was be the man to be influenced and stopped by a word?  Where are the
+rich, the self-made men, the successful men, who have not left some
+corpses on the road behind them?  Success carries them safely, and they
+achieved success only because they had force.
+
+Certainly, violence was not recreation, and it would be more agreeable to
+go in his way peacefully, by the power of intelligence and work, than to
+make a way by blows; but he had not chosen this road, he was thrown into
+it by circumstances, by fate, and whoever wishes to reach the end cannot
+choose the means.  If one must walk in the mud, what matters it, when one
+knows that one will not get muddy?
+
+If Caffie had had heirs, poor people who expected to be saved from
+misery by inheriting his fortune, he would have been touched by this
+consideration, undoubtedly.  Robber!  The word was yet more vile than
+that of assassin.  But who would miss the few banknotes that he would
+take from the safe?  To steal is to injure some one.  Whom would he
+injure?  He could see no one.  But he saw distinctly an army of afflicted
+persons whom he would benefit.
+
+A timid ring of the bell made him start violently, and he was angry with
+himself for being so nervous, he who was always master of his mind as of
+his body.
+
+He opened the door, and a man dressed like a laborer bowed humbly.
+
+"I beg your pardon for disturbing you, sir."
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"I called on account of my wife, if you will be so good as to come to see
+her."
+
+"What is the matter with her?"
+
+"She is about to be confined.  The nurse does not know what to do, and
+sent me for a doctor."
+
+"Did the nurse tell you to come for me?"
+
+"No, sir; she sent me to Doctor Legrand."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"His wife told me he could not get up on account of his bronchitis.  And
+the chemist gave me your address."
+
+"That is right."
+
+"I must tell you, sir, I am an honest man, but we are not rich; we could
+not pay you--immediately."
+
+"I understand.  Wait a few minutes."
+
+Saniel took his instruments and followed the laborer, who, on the way,
+explained his wife's condition.
+
+"Where are we going?"  Saniel asked, interrupting these explanations.
+
+"Rue de la Corderie."
+
+It was behind the Saint Honore' market, on the sixth floor, under the
+roof, in a room that was perfectly clean, in spite of its poverty.  As
+soon as Saniel entered the nurse came forward, and in a few words told
+him the woman's trouble.
+
+"Is the child living?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That is well; let us see."
+
+He approached the bed and made a careful examination of the patient, who
+kept repeating:
+
+"I am going to die.  Save me, doctor!"
+
+"Certainly, we shall save you," he said, very softly.  "I promise you."
+
+He turned away from the bed and said to the nurse:
+
+"The only way to save the mother is to kill the child."
+
+The operation was long, difficult, and painful, and after it was over
+Saniel remained a long time with the patient.  When he reached the street
+a neighboring clock struck five, and the market-place had already begun
+to show signs of life.
+
+But in the streets was still the silence and solitude of night, and
+Saniel began to reflect on what had occurred during the last few hours.
+Thus, he had not hesitated to kill this child, who had, perhaps, sixty or
+seventy years of happy life before it, and he hesitated at the death of
+Caffie, to whom remained only a miserable existence of a few weeks.  The
+interests of a poor, weak, stunted woman had decided him; his, those of
+humanity, left him perplexed, irresolute, weak, and cowardly.  What a
+contradiction!
+
+He walked with his eyes lowered, and at this moment, before him on the
+pavement, he saw an object that glittered in the glare of the gas.  He
+approached it, and found that it was a butcher's knife, that must have
+been lost, either on going to the market or the slaughterhouse.
+
+He hesitated a moment whether he should pick it up or leave it there;
+then looking all about him, and seeing no one in the deserted street,
+and hearing no sound of footsteps in the silence, he bent quickly and
+took it.
+
+Caffie's fate was decided.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+As free from prejudices as one may be, one always retains a few
+As ignorant as a schoolmaster
+Confidence in one's self is strength, but it is also weakness
+Conscience is a bad weighing-machine
+Conscience is only an affair of environment and of education
+Find it more easy to make myself feared than loved
+Force, which is the last word of the philosophy of life
+I believed in the virtue of work, and look at me!
+Intelligent persons have no remorse
+It is only those who own something who worry about the price
+Leant--and when I did not lose my friends I lost my money
+Leisure must be had for light reading, and even more for love
+People whose principle was never to pay a doctor
+Power to work, that was never disturbed or weakened by anything
+Reason before the deed, and not after
+Will not admit that conscience is the proper guide of our action
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Conscience, v1
+by Hector Malot
+
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