" answered Jean-Marie.

The Doctor rose. "I shall wish you a good-morning," he said. "You are too
much for me. Perhaps you have blood in your veins, perhaps celestial
ichor, or perhaps you circulate nothing more gross than respirable air;
but of one thing I am inexpugnably assured:--that you are no human being.
No, boy"--shaking his stick at him--"you are not a human being. Write,
write it in your memory--'I am not a human being--I have no pretension to
be a human being--I am a dive, a dream, an angel, an acrostic, an
illusion--what you please, but not a human being.' And so accept my
humble salutations and farewell!"

And with that the Doctor made off along the street in some emotion, and
the boy stood, mentally gaping, where he left him.

CHAPTER III

THE ADOPTION

Madame Desprez, who answered to the Christian name of Anastasie,
presented an agreeable type of her sex; exceedingly wholesome to look
upon, a stout _brune_, with cool smooth cheeks, steady, dark eyes, and
hands that neither art nor nature could improve. She was the sort of
person over whom adversity passes like a summer cloud; she might, in the
worst of conjunctions, knit her brows into one vertical furrow for a
moment, but the next it would be gone. She had much of the placidity of a
contented nun; with little of her piety, however; for Anastasie was of a
very mundane nature, fond of oysters and old wine, and somewhat bold
pleasantries, and devoted to her husband for her own sake rather than for
his. She was imperturbably good-natured, but had no idea of
self-sacrifice. To live in that pleasant old house, with a green garden
behind and bright flowers about the window, to eat and drink of the best,
to gossip with a neighbour for a quarter of an hour, never to wear stays
or a dress except when she went to Fontainebleau shopping, to be kept in
a continual supply of racy novels, and to be married to Dr. Desprez and
have no ground of jealousy, filled the cup of her nature to the brim.
Those who had known the Doctor in bachelor days, when he had aired quite
as many theories, but of a different order, attributed his present
philosophy to the study of Anastasie. It was her brute enjoyment that he
rationalised and perhaps vainly imitated.

Madame Desprez was an artist in the kitchen, and made coffee to a nicety.
She had a knack of tidiness, with which she had infected the Doctor;
everything was in its place; everything capable of polish shone
gl