an infant. An infant is helpless, but it's generally voted promising.
I'm not promising, eh? Society can't lose a less valuable member."

Newman was strongly moved. He got up and turned his back upon his friend
and walked away to the window, where he stood looking out, but only
vaguely seeing. "No, I don't like the look of your back," Valentin
continued. "I have always been an observer of backs; yours is quite out
of sorts."

Newman returned to his bedside and begged him to be quiet. "Be quiet and
get well," he said. "That's what you must do. Get well and help me."

"I told you you were in trouble! How can I help you?" Valentin asked.

"I'll let you know when you are better. You were always curious; there
is something to get well for!" Newman answered, with resolute animation.

Valentin closed his eyes and lay a long time without speaking. He seemed
even to have fallen asleep. But at the end of half an hour he began to
talk again. "I am rather sorry about that place in the bank. Who knows
but what I might have become another Rothschild? But I wasn't meant for
a banker; bankers are not so easy to kill. Don't you think I have
been very easy to kill? It's not like a serious man. It's really very
mortifying. It's like telling your hostess you must go, when you count
upon her begging you to stay, and then finding she does no such thing.
'Really--so soon? You've only just come!' Life doesn't make me any such
polite little speech."

Newman for some time said nothing, but at last he broke out. "It's a bad
case--it's a bad case--it's the worst case I ever met. I don't want
to say anything unpleasant, but I can't help it. I've seen men dying
before--and I've seen men shot. But it always seemed more natural; they
were not so clever as you. Damnation--damnation! You might have done
something better than this. It's about the meanest winding-up of a man's
affairs that I can imagine!"

Valentin feebly waved his hand to and fro. "Don't insist--don't insist!
It is mean--decidedly mean. For you see at the bottom--down at the
bottom, in a little place as small as the end of a wine-funnel--I agree
with you!"

A few moments after this the doctor put his head through the half-opened
door and, perceiving that Valentin was awake, came in and felt his
pulse. He shook his head and declared that he had talked too much--ten
times too much. "Nonsense!" said Valentin; "a man sentenced to death can
never talk too much. Have you never read an