est judges of
character in the world, and there was not a trait or feeling concealed
under the quiet, nonchalant exterior of Mons. Volmont Cherbuliez which
they did not thoroughly understand. About his brother Alphege, who was a
physician, there was more diversity of opinion. That he also was bad,
cruel, dissipated, profoundly deceitful, there was no doubt in the minds
of his future chattels, but what precise form his idiosyncrasies would
take they felt to be uncertain, and gazed with terror--all the more
acute for being somewhat vague--at his cold, impassive face. In the mean
time, nothing could be more irreproachable than the demeanor of the two
brothers. Dr. Alphege was known to be a man of great skill, a graduate
of the medical schools of Paris and always interested in the practice of
his profession. He devoted himself to his mother-in-law now with
unfailing assiduity, and when her disease--which he pronounced to be a
dangerous gastric affection--baffled his utmost efforts, he sent for
advice and assistance even to New Orleans; which, thirty years ago in
South-western Louisiana, was quite an enterprise. His fellow-physicians
agreed with him in his management of the case, and the daughters and
friends of Madame Hypolite, though deeply grieved by her illness, felt
that nothing more could be done. As is usual in diseases of the stomach,
her suffering was very great, and the most rigid care had to be
exercised in the choice and administration of nourishment. On her food,
said Dr. Alphege, he depended for the only hope of a cure: consequently,
the rules which he laid down must be, and were, enforced in the most
rigid manner. The penalty of transgressing his orders was always severe,
but now the fiat went forth that any one of the nurses or attendants
upon Madame Hypolite who should depart from his carefully-explained
orders in the minutest particular should receive a punishment such as
had never been administered in that household before.

One of the marked features of creole life was always the immense number
of house-servants, and in a long illness such as Madame Hypolite was now
experiencing many attendants and various nurses seemed a matter of
course. Therefore the doctor's orders were doubly necessary, and would
in all cases have been entirely correct, since the first element of good
nursing is implicit obedience. Still, with all this care, she did not
improve, and in the evening of which we write her two daughters,