d she was, and had good reason to be so, in
order to subsist on the little annuity she had contrived, in the days of
her service, to scrape together. For the rest, as we have no wish to
disguise the truth, the Countess was by no means an amiable person--bitter
and selfish, hostile to all the world, as venomous as her detractors, and
without pity for others, as those so often are who have suffered much
themselves.

She was now stretched motionless on her bed. The old crones had come about
her less from humanity than to discover the secrets of her _den_, the
access to which she had hitherto strictly defended. She held in her left
hand a small packet wrapped up in half a pocket-handkerchief, which she
clutched convulsively. It was the _treasure_, they all exclaimed.

Her case was a grave one--a congestion of the brain. The doctor bled her,
and then wrote his prescription--his first! The bleeding brought the
Countess to herself. When she heard him tell one of the bystanders to go
to the chemist and get the potion,--

"Potion!" she exclaimed, laying hold of the paper, "I want no potion--I am
not ill. Do you think I have money to pay for your drugs? Go away!--all of
you--go!"

She crumpled the prescription in her hand, and was about to throw it on
the floor, when something in the paper apparently arrested her. She read
the prescription, and, turning to the doctor with a manner quite changed
and subdued, asked how much it would cost? She then opened the little
packet she had held till then so jealously in her hand. All the old crones
stretched forward. A few franc-pieces and some great sous were all the
_treasure_ it contained.

That first client, so long looked for, was come at last. Our doctor had
his patient--that first patient whom one pets and caresses, to whom one is
nurse as well as physician. No uncertain diagnostics _there_--no retarded
visits, no hasty prescriptions. If this one die, it is verily his fault.
He devoted himself, body and soul, to the old woman. Certainly the fees
would not be very brilliant, nor would the cure spread his reputation very
widely. He thought not of this--but save her he must! He absolutely loved
this unamiable Countess. He assembled the _ban et arriere-ban_ of science,
and armed himself _cap-a-pie_ in knowledge for her defence.

The object of all this solicitude received his attentions, however, with
an increasing ill-humour, for each fresh medicine made a fresh demand upon
her purs