er_, no tomfoolery between us, eh? We are both met
before the same dish, but I leave you your share. I intend that you
shall leave me mine."

And Jenkins's air of astonishment did not make him pause. "Let this be
said once for all. I have promised the Nabob to present him to the duke,
just as, formerly, I presented you. Do not mix yourself up, therefore,
with what concerns me alone."

Jenkins laid his hand on his heart, protested his innocence. He had
never had any intention. Certainly Monpavon was too intimate a friend of
the duke, for any other--How could he have supposed?

"I suppose nothing," said the old nobleman, calmer but still cold.
"I merely desired to have a very clear explanation with you on this
subject."

The Irishman extended a widely opened hand.

"My dear marquis, explanations are always clear between men of honour."

"Honour is a big word, Jenkins. Let us say people of deportment--that
suffices."

And that deportment, which he invoked as the supreme guide of conduct,
recalling him suddenly to the sense of his ludicrous situation, the
marquis offered one finger to his friend's demonstrative shake of the
hand, and passed back with dignity behind his curtain, while the other
left, in haste to resume his round.

What a magnificent clientele he had, this Jenkins! Nothing but princely
mansions, heated staircases, laden with flowers at every landing,
upholstered and silky alcoves, where disease was transformed into
something discreet, elegant, where nothing suggested that brutal hand
which throws on a bed of pain those who only cease to work in order to
die. They were not in any true speech, sick people, these clients of
the Irish doctor. They would have been refused admission to a hospital.
Their organs not possessing even strength to give them a shock, the seat
of their malady was to be discovered nowhere, and the doctor, as he bent
over them, might have sought in vain the throb of any suffering in those
bodies which the inertia, the silence of death already inhabited. They
were worn-out, debilitated people, anaemics, exhausted by an absurd
life, but who found it so good still that they fought to have it
prolonged. And the Jenkins pills became famous precisely by reason of
that lash of the whip which they gave to jaded existences.

"Doctor, I beseech you, let me be fit to go to the ball this evening!"
the young woman would say, prostrate on her lounge, and whose voice was
reduced to a breath.