her; you have an English poodle for your rival, and you must seek to
understand the moods of your patroness, and amuse her, and--keep silence
about yourselves. As for you, unblushing parasite, uncrowned king
of unliveried servants, leave your real character at home, let your
digestion keep pace with your host's laugh when he laughs, mingle your
tears with his, and find his epigrams amusing; if you want to relieve
your mind about him, wait till he is ruined. That is the way the world
shows its respect for the unfortunate; it persecutes them, or slays them
in the dust.

Such thoughts as these welled up in Raphael's heart with the suddenness
of poetic inspiration. He looked around him, and felt the influence of
the forbidding gloom that society breathes out in order to rid itself of
the unfortunate; it nipped his soul more effectually than the east wind
grips the body in December. He locked his arms over his chest, set his
back against the wall, and fell into a deep melancholy. He mused upon
the meagre happiness that this depressing way of living can give. What
did it amount to? Amusement with no pleasure in it, gaiety without
gladness, joyless festivity, fevered dreams empty of all delight,
firewood or ashes on the hearth without a spark of flame in them. When
he raised his head, he found himself alone, all the billiard players had
gone.

"I have only to let them know my power to make them worship my coughing
fits," he said to himself, and wrapped himself against the world in the
cloak of his contempt.

Next day the resident doctor came to call upon him, and took an anxious
interest in his health. Raphael felt a thrill of joy at the friendly
words addressed to him. The doctor's face, to his thinking, wore an
expression that was kind and pleasant; the pale curls of his wig seemed
redolent of philanthropy; the square cut of his coat, the loose folds
of his trousers, his big Quaker-like shoes, everything about him down
to the powder shaken from his queue and dusted in a circle upon his
slightly stooping shoulders, revealed an apostolic nature, and spoke of
Christian charity and of the self-sacrifice of a man, who, out of sheer
devotion to his patients, had compelled himself to learn to play whist
and tric-trac so well that he never lost money to any of them.

"My Lord Marquis," said he, after a long talk with Raphael, "I can
dispel your uneasiness beyond all doubt. I know your constitution well
enough by this time to ass