was pleased to call it, with Pons. It will not be out of place
to call attention to one particularly distressing symptom of liver
complaint. The sufferer is always more or less inclined to impatience
and fits of anger; an outburst of this kind seems to give relief at the
time, much as a patient while the fever fit is upon him feels that he
has boundless strength; but collapse sets in so soon as the excitement
passes off, and the full extent of mischief sustained by the system
is discernible. This is especially the case when the disease has been
induced by some great shock; and the prostration is so much the more
dangerous because the patient is kept upon a restricted diet. It is
a kind of fever affecting neither the blood nor the brain, but the
humoristic mechanism, fretting the whole system, producing melancholy,
in which the patient hates himself; in such a crisis anything may cause
dangerous irritation.

In spite of all that the doctor could say, La Cibot had no belief in
this wear and tear of the nervous system by the humoristic. She was
a woman of the people, without experience or education; Dr. Poulain's
explanations for her were simply "doctor's notions." Like most of her
class, she thought that sick people must be fed, and nothing short of
Dr. Poulain's direct order prevented her from administering ham, a nice
omelette, or vanilla chocolate upon the sly.

The infatuation of the working classes on this point is very strong.
The reason of their reluctance to enter a hospital is the idea that they
will be starved there. The mortality caused by the food smuggled in by
the wives of patients on visiting-days was at one time so great that the
doctors were obliged to institute a very strict search for contraband
provisions.

If La Cibot was to realize her profits at once, a momentary quarrel must
be worked up in some way. She began by telling Pons about her visit to
the theatre, not omitting her passage at arms with Mlle. Heloise the
dancer.

"But why did you go?" the invalid asked for the third time. La Cibot
once launched on a stream of words, he was powerless to stop her.

"So, then, when I had given her a piece of my mind, Mademoiselle Heloise
saw who I was and knuckled under, and we were the best of friends.--And
now do you ask me why I went?" she added, repeating Pons' question.

There are certain babblers, babblers of genius are they, who sweep
up interruptions, objections, and observations in this way as t