the local climate. He thought at
first there was no place so healthful in the arrondissement. By the end
of the second year, he protested there was none so wholesome in the whole
department. And for some time before he met Jean-Marie he had been
prepared to challenge all France and the better part of Europe for a
rival to his chosen spot.

"Doctor," he would say--"doctor is a foul word. It should not be used to
ladies. It implies disease. I remark it, as a flaw in our civilisation,
that we have not the proper horror of disease. Now I, for my part, have
washed my hands of it; I have renounced my laureation; I am no doctor; I
am only a worshipper of the true goddess Hygieia. Ah! believe me, it is
she who has the cestus! And here, in this exiguous hamlet, has she placed
her shrine: here she dwells and lavishes her gifts; here I walk with her
in the early morning, and she shows me how strong she has made the
peasants, how fruitful she has made the fields, how the trees grow up
tall and comely under her eyes, and the fishes in the river become clean
and agile at her presence.--Rheumatism!" he would cry, on some malapert
interruption, "Oh, yes, I believe we do have a little rheumatism. That
could hardly be avoided, you know, on a river. And of course the place
stands a little low; and the meadows are marshy, there's no doubt. But,
my dear sir, look at Bourron! Bourron stands high. Bourron is close to
the forest; plenty of ozone there, you would say. Well, compared with
Gretz, Bourron is a perfect shambles."

The morning after he had been summoned to the dying mountebank, the
Doctor visited the wharf at the tail of his garden, and had a long look
at the running water. This he called prayer; but whether his adorations
were addressed to the goddess Hygieia or some more orthodox deity, never
plainly appeared. For he had uttered doubtful oracles, sometimes
declaring that a river was the type of bodily health, sometimes extolling
it as the great moral preacher, continually preaching peace, continuity,
and diligence to man's tormented spirits. After he had watched a mile or
so of the clear water running by before his eyes, seen a fish or two come
to the surface with a gleam of silver, and sufficiently admired the long
shadows of the trees falling half across the river from the opposite
bank, with patches of moving sunlight in between, he strolled once more
up the garden and through his house into the street, feeling cool and
renov