“What, is my father your patient?” asked Celestine.  “Living in the Rue Barbet-de-Jouy?”

“Precisely so,” said Bianchon.

“And the disease is inevitably fatal?” said Victorin in dismay.

“I will go to see him,” said Celestine, rising.

“I positively forbid it, madame,” Bianchon quietly said.  “The disease is contagious.”

“But you go there, monsieur,” replied the young woman.  “Do you think that a daughter’s duty is less binding than a doctor’s?”

“Madame, a physician knows how to protect himself against infection, and the rashness of your devotion proves to me that you would probably be less prudent than I.”

Celestine, however, got up and went to her room, where she dressed to go out.

“Monsieur,” said Victorin to Bianchon, “have you any hope of saving Monsieur and Madame Crevel?”

“I hope, but I do not believe that I may,” said Bianchon.  “The case is to me quite inexplicable.  The disease is peculiar to negroes and the American tribes, whose skin is differently constituted to that of the white races.  Now I can trace no connection with the copper-colored tribes, with negroes or half-castes, in Monsieur or Madame Crevel.

“And though it is a very interesting disease to us, it is a terrible thing for the sufferers.  The poor woman, who is said to have been very pretty, is punished for her sins, for she is now squalidly hideous if she is still anything at all.  She is losing her hair and teeth, her skin is like a leper’s, she is a horror to herself; her hands are horrible, covered with greenish pustules, her nails are loose, and the flesh is eaten away by the poisoned humors.”

“And the cause of such a disease?” asked the lawyer.

“Oh!” said the doctor, “the cause lies in a form of rapid blood-poisoning; it degenerates with terrific rapidity.  I hope to act on the blood; I am having it analyzed; and I am now going home to ascertain the result of the labors of my friend Professor Duval, the famous chemist, with a view to trying one of those desperate measures by which we sometimes attempt to defeat death.”

“The hand of God is there!” said Adeline, in a voice husky with emotion.  “Though that woman has brought sorrows on me which have led me in moments of madness to invoke the vengeance of Heaven, I hope —­God knows I hope—­you may succeed, doctor.”

Victorin felt dizzy.  He looked at his mother, his sister, and the physician by turns, quaking lest they should read his thoughts.  He felt himself a murderer.

Hortense, for her part, thought God was just.

Celestine came back to beg her husband to accompany her.

“If you insist on going, madame, and you too, monsieur, keep at least a foot between you and the bed of the sufferer, that is the chief precaution.  Neither you nor your wife must dream of kissing the dying man.  And, indeed, you ought to go with your wife, Monsieur Hulot, to hinder her from disobeying my injunctions.”