d an irregular practice;
not a bad fellow, but one who would stick at nothing, and had made a
specialty of affairs like the present. Fee, two guineas and breakfast.
Just now he was spending his holiday with Cloclo at Ville d'Avray, and
came puffing to the meeting place, carrying a little bag which held
his instrument case, medicines, bandages, splints--enough to set up an
ambulance.

'Is it to be scratch or wound?' he asked, as he took his seat in the
carriage opposite Paul.

'Scratch, of course, doctor, scratch, with swords of the Institute. The
Academie Francaise against the Sciences Morales et Politiques.'

Gomes smiled as he steadied his bag between his knees.

'I did not know, so I brought the big apparatus.'

'Well, you must display it; it will impress the enemy,' suggested
Vedrine, in his quiet way.

The doctor winked, a little put out by the two seconds, whose faces were
unknown to the boulevards, and to whom Paul Astier, who treated him like
a servant, did not even introduce him.

As the carriage started, the window of a room on the first floor opened,
and a pair came and looked at them curiously. The girl was Marie Donval,
of the Gymnase, whom the doctor recognised and named in a loud voice.
The other was a deformed little creature, whose head was barely visible
above the window-sill. Freydet, with much indignation, and Vedrine, with
some amusement, recognised Fage.

'Are you surprised, M. de Freydet?' said Paul. And hereupon he launched
into a savage attack upon woman. Woman! A disordered child, with all a
child's perversity and wickedness, all its instinctive desire to cheat,
to lie, to tease, all its cowardice. She was greedy, she was vain, she
was inquisitive. Oh yes, she could serve you a hash of somebody else,
but she had not an idea of her own; and in argument, why, she was as
full of holes, twists, and slippery places as the pavement on a frosty
night after a thaw. How was conversation possible with a woman? Why,
there was nothing in her, neither kindness nor pity nor intellect--not
leven common sense. For a fashionable bonnet or one of Spricht's gowns
she was capable of stealing, of any trick however dirty; for at bottom
the only thing she cares for is dress. To know the strength of this
passion a man must have gone, as Paul had, with the most elegant
ladies of fashion to the rooms of the great man-milliner. They were
hand-and-glove with the forewomen, asked them to breakfast at their
countr