“Oh, I have resumed my trade,” replied Doctor Keene.

“So I have heard; but, Charlie, that is all in favor of the people who want a skilful and advanced physician and do not mind killing him; I should advise you not to do it.”

“You mean” (the incorrigible little doctor smiled cynically) “if I should ask your advice.  I am going to get well, Honore.”

His visitor shrugged.

“So much the better.  I do confess I am tempted to make use of you in your official capacity, right now.  Do you feel strong enough to go with me in your gig a little way?”

“A professional call?”

“Yes, and a difficult case; also a confidential one.”

“Ah! confidential!” said the little man, in his painful, husky irony.  “You want to get me into the sort of scrape I got our ‘professor’ into, eh?”

“Possibly a worse one,” replied the amiable Creole.

“And I must be mum, eh?”

“I would prefer.”

“Shall I need any instruments?  No?”—­with a shade of disappointment on his face.

He pulled a bell-rope and ordered his gig to the street door.

“How are affairs about town?” he asked, as he made some slight preparation for the street.

“Excitement continues.  Just as I came along, a private difficulty between a Creole and an Americain drew instantly half the street together to take sides strictly according to belongings and without asking a question.  My-de’-seh, we are having, as Frowenfeld says, a war of human acids and alkalies.”

They descended and drove away.  At the first corner the lad who drove turned, by Honore’s direction, toward the rue Dauphine, entered it, passed down it to the rue Dumaine, turned into this toward the river again and entered the rue Conde.  The route was circuitous.  They stopped at the carriage-door of a large brick house.  The wicket was opened by Clemence.  They alighted without driving in.

“Hey, old witch,” said the doctor, with mock severity; “not hung yet?”

The houses of any pretension to comfortable spaciousness in the closely built parts of the town were all of the one, general, Spanish-American plan.  Honore led the doctor through the cool, high, tessellated carriage-hall, on one side of which were the drawing-rooms, closed and darkened.  They turned at the bottom, ascended a broad, iron-railed staircase to the floor above, and halted before the open half of a glazed double door with a clumsy iron latch.  It was the entrance to two spacious chambers, which were thrown into one by folded doors.

The doctor made a low, indrawn whistle and raised his eyebrows—­the rooms were so sumptuously furnished; immovable largeness and heaviness, lofty sobriety, abundance of finely wrought brass mounting, motionless richness of upholstery, much silent twinkle of pendulous crystal, a soft semi-obscurity—­such were the characteristics.  The long windows of the farther apartment could be seen to open over the street, and the air from behind, coming in over a green mass of fig-trees that stood in the paved court below, moved through the rooms, making them cool and cavernous.