ead erect,
and a mind content. In short, to put the facts into a word, Horace was
the Pylades of more than one Orestes--creditors being regarded as the
nearest modern equivalent to the Furies of the ancients.

He carried his poverty with the cheerfulness which is perhaps one of
the chief elements of courage, and, like all people who have nothing,
he made very few debts. As sober as a camel and active as a stag, he was
steadfast in his ideas and his conduct.

The happy phase of Bianchon's life began on the day when the famous
surgeon had proof of the qualities and the defects which, these no less
than those, make Doctor Horace Bianchon doubly dear to his friends. When
a leading clinical practitioner takes a young man to his bosom, that
young man has, as they say, his foot in the stirrup. Desplein did not
fail to take Bianchon as his assistant to wealthy houses, where some
complimentary fee almost always found its way into the student's pocket,
and where the mysteries of Paris life were insensibly revealed to the
young provincial; he kept him at his side when a consultation was to
be held, and gave him occupation; sometimes he would send him to a
watering-place with a rich patient; in fact, he was making a practice
for him. The consequence was that in the course of time the Tyrant of
surgery had a devoted ally. These two men--one at the summit of
honor and of his science, enjoying an immense fortune and an immense
reputation; the other a humble Omega, having neither fortune nor
fame--became intimate friends.

The great Desplein told his house surgeon everything; the disciple knew
whether such or such a woman had sat on a chair near the master, or on
the famous couch in Desplein's surgery, on which he slept. Bianchon knew
the mysteries of that temperament, a compound of the lion and the bull,
which at last expanded and enlarged beyond measure the great man's
torso, and caused his death by degeneration of the heart. He studied the
eccentricities of that busy life, the schemes of that sordid avarice,
the hopes of the politician who lurked behind the man of science; he was
able to foresee the mortifications that awaited the only sentiment that
lay hid in a heart that was steeled, but not of steel.

One day Bianchon spoke to Desplein of a poor water-carrier of the
Saint-Jacques district, who had a horrible disease caused by fatigue and
want; this wretched Auvergnat had had nothing but potatoes to eat during
the dreadful wi