annot be moved!"

"I will answer for her," said Halpersohn, curtly; "but I will answer
for her only on those conditions. She will have to exchange her present
malady for another still more terrible, which may last a year, six
months at the very least. You may come and see her at the hospital,
since you are her father."

"Are you certain of curing her?" said Monsieur Bernard.

"Certain," repeated the Jew. "Madame has in her body an element, a
vitiated fluid, the national disease, and it must be eliminated.
You must bring her to me at Challot, rue Basse-Saint-Pierre, private
hospital of Doctor Halpersohn."

"How can I?"

"On a stretcher, just as all sick persons are carried to hospitals."

"But the removal will kill her!"

"No."

As he said the word in a curt tone he was already at the door; Godefroid
rejoined him on the staircase. The Jew, who was stifling with heat, said
in his ear:

"Besides the three thousand francs, the cost will be fifteen francs a
day, payable three months in advance."

"Very good, monsieur. And," continued Godefroid, putting one foot on the
step of the cabriolet, into which the doctor had sprung, "you say you
will answer for the cure?"

"I will answer for it," said the Jewish doctor. "Are you in love with
the lady?"

"No," replied Godefroid.

"You must not repeat what I am about to say to you; I only say it to
prove to you that I am certain of a cure. If you are guilty of the
slightest indiscretion you will kill her."

Godefroid replied with a gesture only.

"For the last seventeen years she has been a victim to the element in
her system called _plica polonica_,[*] which has produced all these
ravages. I have seen more terrible cases than this. Now, I alone in the
present day know how to bring this disease to a crisis, and force it
outward so as to obtain a chance to cure it--for it cannot always be
cured. You see, monsieur, that I am disinterested. If this lady were of
great importance, a Baronne de Nucingen, or any other wife or daughter
of a modern Croesus, this cure would bring me one hundred--two hundred
thousand francs; in short, anything I chose to ask for it. However, it
is only a trifling loss to me."

[*] Balzac's description of _plica polonica_ does not agree
with that given in English medical dictionaries and
cyclopedias. But as the book was written at Wierschovnia,
Poland, in 1847, when he was attended by a celebrated Polish
physician, a