upply of wood that was to warm the poor child.

Then at the end of a week she departed, after a thousand injunctions to
be good now that he was going to be left to himself.

The syllabus that he read on the notice-board stunned him; lectures
on anatomy, lectures on pathology, lectures on physiology, lectures on
pharmacy, lectures on botany and clinical medicine, and therapeutics,
without counting hygiene and materia medica--all names of whose
etymologies he was ignorant, and that were to him as so many doors to
sanctuaries filled with magnificent darkness.

He understood nothing of it all; it was all very well to listen--he did
not follow. Still he worked; he had bound note-books, he attended all
the courses, never missed a single lecture. He did his little daily task
like a mill-horse, who goes round and round with his eyes bandaged, not
knowing what work he is doing.

To spare him expense his mother sent him every week by the carrier a
piece of veal baked in the oven, with which he lunched when he came back
from the hospital, while he sat kicking his feet against the wall.
After this he had to run off to lectures, to the operation-room, to the
hospital, and return to his home at the other end of the town. In the
evening, after the poor dinner of his landlord, he went back to his
room and set to work again in his wet clothes, which smoked as he sat in
front of the hot stove.

On the fine summer evenings, at the time when the close streets are
empty, when the servants are playing shuttle-cock at the doors, he
opened his window and leaned out. The river, that makes of this quarter
of Rouen a wretched little Venice, flowed beneath him, between the
bridges and the railings, yellow, violet, or blue. Working men, kneeling
on the banks, washed their bare arms in the water. On poles projecting
from the attics, skeins of cotton were drying in the air. Opposite,
beyond the roots spread the pure heaven with the red sun setting. How
pleasant it must be at home! How fresh under the beech-tree! And he
expanded his nostrils to breathe in the sweet odours of the country
which did not reach him.

He grew thin, his figure became taller, his face took a saddened look
that made it nearly interesting. Naturally, through indifference, he
abandoned all the resolutions he had made. Once he missed a lecture; the
next day all the lectures; and, enjoying his idleness, little by little,
he gave up work altogether. He got into the habit of g