“Here is her portrait,” said Monsieur Bernard, unhooking from the wall a handsome frame which enclosed several fine miniatures.

Halpersohn felt the head and handled the hair of the patient while he looked at the portrait of Vanda Tarlowska, born Countess Sobolewska.

“Relate to me the symptoms of your illness,” he said, placing himself on the sofa and looking fixedly at Vanda during the twenty minutes the history, given alternately by the father and daughter, lasted.

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“Ah! good!” he cried, rising; “I will answer for the cure.  Mind, I do not say that I can restore the use of her legs; but cured of the disease, that she shall be.  Only, I must have her in a private hospital under my own eye.”

“But, monsieur, my daughter cannot be moved!”

“I will answer for her,” said Halpersohn, curtly; “but I will answer for her only on those conditions.  She will have to exchange her present malady for another still more terrible, which may last a year, six months at the very least.  You may come and see her at the hospital, since you are her father.”

“Are you certain of curing her?” said Monsieur Bernard.

“Certain,” repeated the Jew.  “Madame has in her body an element, a vitiated fluid, the national disease, and it must be eliminated.  You must bring her to me at Challot, rue Basse-Saint-Pierre, private hospital of Doctor Halpersohn.”

“How can I?”

“On a stretcher, just as all sick persons are carried to hospitals.”

“But the removal will kill her!”

“No.”

As he said the word in a curt tone he was already at the door; Godefroid rejoined him on the staircase.  The Jew, who was stifling with heat, said in his ear: 

“Besides the three thousand francs, the cost will be fifteen francs a day, payable three months in advance.”

“Very good, monsieur.  And,” continued Godefroid, putting one foot on the step of the cabriolet, into which the doctor had sprung, “you say you will answer for the cure?”

“I will answer for it,” said the Jewish doctor.  “Are you in love with the lady?”

“No,” replied Godefroid.

“You must not repeat what I am about to say to you; I only say it to prove to you that I am certain of a cure.  If you are guilty of the slightest indiscretion you will kill her.”

Godefroid replied with a gesture only.

“For the last seventeen years she has been a victim to the element in her system called plica polonica,[*] which has produced all these ravages.  I have seen more terrible cases than this.  Now, I alone in the present day know how to bring this disease to a crisis, and force it outward so as to obtain a chance to cure it—­for it cannot always be cured.  You see, monsieur, that I am disinterested.  If this lady were of great importance, a Baronne de Nucingen, or any other wife or daughter of a modern Croesus, this cure would bring me one hundred—­two hundred thousand francs; in short, anything I chose to ask for it.  However, it is only a trifling loss to me.”