l subject; but he who can see a flower must be able to see the
sun. The man who on hearing a diplomate he has saved ask, "How is the
Emperor?" could say, "The courtier is alive; the man will follow!"--that
man is not merely a surgeon or a physician, he is prodigiously witty
also. Hence a patient and diligent student of human nature will
admit Desplein's exorbitant pretensions, and believe--as he himself
believed--that he might have been no less great as a minister than he
was as a surgeon.

Among the riddles which Desplein's life presents to many of his
contemporaries, we have chosen one of the most interesting, because the
answer is to be found at the end of the narrative, and will avenge him
for some foolish charges.

Of all the students in Desplein's hospital, Horace Bianchon was one
of those to whom he most warmly attached himself. Before being a house
surgeon at the Hotel-Dieu, Horace Bianchon had been a medical student
lodging in a squalid boarding house in the _Quartier Latin_, known as
the Maison Vauquer. This poor young man had felt there the gnawing
of that burning poverty which is a sort of crucible from which great
talents are to emerge as pure and incorruptible as diamonds, which may
be subjected to any shock without being crushed. In the fierce fire of
their unbridled passions they acquire the most impeccable honesty, and
get into the habit of fighting the battles which await genius with the
constant work by which they coerce their cheated appetites.

Horace was an upright young fellow, incapable of tergiversation on a
matter of honor, going to the point without waste of words, and as ready
to pledge his cloak for a friend as to give him his time and his night
hours. Horace, in short, was one of those friends who are never anxious
as to what they may get in return for what they give, feeling sure that
they will in their turn get more than they give. Most of his
friends felt for him that deeply-seated respect which is inspired by
unostentatious virtue, and many of them dreaded his censure. But Horace
made no pedantic display of his qualities. He was neither a puritan nor
a preacher; he could swear with a grace as he gave his advice, and
was always ready for a jollification when occasion offered. A jolly
companion, not more prudish than a trooper, as frank and outspoken--not
as a sailor, for nowadays sailors are wily diplomates--but as an honest
man who has nothing in his life to hide, he walked with his h