o, about to appear before God (you are not yet at
this point, I know), had implored His mercy, and who certainly died in
the best frame of mind. Let us hope that, like them, you will set us a
good example. Thus, as a precaution, what is to prevent you from saying
morning and evening a 'Hail Mary, full of grace,' and 'Our Father which
art in heaven'? Yes, do that, for my sake, to oblige me. That won't cost
you anything. Will you promise me?"

The poor devil promised. The cure came back day after day. He chatted
with the landlady, and even told anecdotes interspersed with jokes and
puns that Hippolyte did not understand. Then, as soon as he could, he
fell back upon matters of religion, putting on an appropriate expression
of face.

His zeal seemed successful, for the club-foot soon manifested a desire
to go on a pilgrimage to Bon-Secours if he were cured; to which Monsieur
Bournisien replied that he saw no objection; two precautions were better
than one; it was no risk.

The chemist was indignant at what he called the manoeuvres of the
priest; they were prejudicial, he said, to Hippolyte's convalescence,
and he kept repeating to Madame Lefrancois, "Leave him alone! leave him
alone! You perturb his morals with your mysticism."

But the good woman would no longer listen to him; he was the cause of it
all. From a spirit of contradiction she hung up near the bedside of the
patient a basin filled with holy-water and a branch of box.

Religion, however, seemed no more able to succour him than surgery, and
the invincible gangrene still spread from the extremities towards the
stomach. It was all very well to vary the potions and change the
poultices; the muscles each day rotted more and more; and at last
Charles replied by an affirmative nod of the head when Mere Lefrancois
asked him if she could not, as a forlorn hope, send for Monsieur Canivet
of Neufchatel, who was a celebrity.

A doctor of medicine, fifty years of age, enjoying a good position and
self-possessed, Charles's colleague did not refrain from laughing
disdainfully when he had uncovered the leg, mortified to the knee. Then
having flatly declared that it must be amputated, he went off to the
chemist's to rail at the asses who could have reduced a poor man to such
a state. Shaking Monsieur Homais by the button of his coat, he shouted
out in the shop:

"These are the inventions of Paris! These are the ideas of those gentry
of the capital! It is like strabismus,