rning. 'I rise earlier than any one
else in the village,' he once boasted. 'It is a fair consequence that I
know more and wish to do less with my knowledge.'

The Doctor was a connoisseur of sunrises, and loved a good theatrical
effect to usher in the day. He had a theory of dew, by which he could
predict the weather. Indeed, most things served him to that end: the
sound of the bells from all the neighbouring villages, the smell of the
forest, the visits and the behaviour of both birds and fishes, the look
of the plants in his garden, the disposition of cloud, the colour of the
light, and last, although not least, the arsenal of meteorological
instruments in a louvre-boarded hutch upon the lawn. Ever since he had
settled at Gretz, he had been growing more and more into the local
meteorologist, the unpaid champion of the local climate. He thought at
first there was no place so healthful in the arrondissement. By the end
of the second year, he protested there was none so wholesome in the whole
department. And for some time before he met Jean-Marie he had been
prepared to challenge all France and the better part of Europe for a
rival to his chosen spot.

'Doctor,' he would say--'doctor is a foul word. It should not be used to
ladies. It implies disease. I remark it, as a flaw in our civilisation,
that we have not the proper horror of disease. Now I, for my part, have
washed my hands of it; I have renounced my laureation; I am no doctor; I
am only a worshipper of the true goddess Hygieia. Ah, believe me, it is
she who has the cestus! And here, in this exiguous hamlet, has she
placed her shrine: here she dwells and lavishes her gifts; here I walk
with her in the early morning, and she shows me how strong she has made
the peasants, how fruitful she has made the fields, how the trees grow up
tall and comely under her eyes, and the fishes in the river become clean
and agile at her presence.--Rheumatism!' he would cry, on some malapert
interruption, 'O, yes, I believe we do have a little rheumatism. That
could hardly be avoided, you know, on a river. And of course the place
stands a little low; and the meadows are marshy, there's no doubt. But,
my dear sir, look at Bourron! Bourron stands high. Bourron is close to
the forest; plenty of ozone there, you would say. Well, compared with
Gretz, Bourron is a perfect shambles.'

The morning after he had been summoned to the dying mountebank, the
Doctor visited the