“Tell them he can get them from Monsieur Joseph.”

The youth thought the words were intended as a cruel joke.  He sat down in the snow as he saw the cab disappearing rapidly.  Presently he sprang up with momentary vigor, returned to his room and went to bed worn out with fatigue and distress.

The next morning, when the poor boy woke alone in that apartment so lately occupied by his mother and grandfather, the painful emotions of his cruel position filled his mind.  The solitude of his home, where up to this time every moment had had its duty and its occupation, seemed so hard to bear that he went down to Madame Vauthier to ask if she had received any news of his grandfather.  The woman answered sneeringly that he knew very well, or he might know, where to find his grandfather; the reason why he had not come in, she said, was because he had gone to live at the chateau de Clichy.  This malicious speech, from the woman who had coaxed and wheedled him the evening before, put the lad into another frenzy, and he rushed to the hospital once more, desperate with the idea that his grandfather was in prison.

Baron Bourlac had wandered all night round the hospital, where he was refused entrance, and round the private residence of Dr. Halpersohn from whom he wished, naturally, to obtain an explanation of such treatment.  The doctor did not get home till two in the morning.  At half-past one the old man was at his door; on being told he was absent, he turned and walked about the grand alley of the Champs Elysees until half-past two.  When he again went to the house, the porter told him that Monsieur Halpersohn had returned, gone to bed, was asleep, and could not be disturbed.

The poor father, in despair, wandered along the quay and under the frost-laden trees of the Cours-la-reine, waiting for daylight.  At nine o’clock in the morning he again presented himself at the doctor’s house, demanding to know the reason why his daughter was thus virtually imprisoned.

“Monsieur,” replied the doctor, to whose presence he was admitted, “yesterday I told you I would answer for your daughter’s recovery; but to-day I am responsible for her life and you will readily understand that I must be the sovereign master in such a case.  Yesterday your daughter took a medicine intended to bring out her disease, the plica polonica; until that horrible disease shows itself on the surface you cannot see her.  I will not allow excitement or any mistake of management to carry off my patient and your daughter.  If you positively insist on seeing her, I shall call a consultation of three physicians, so as to relieve myself of responsibility, for the patient may die of it.”

The old man, worn out with fatigue, dropped on a chair; but he rose immediately, saying:—­

“Forgive me, monsieur.  I have spent the night waiting for you in dreadful distress of mind.  You cannot know to what degree I love my daughter; I have nursed her for fifteen years hovering between life and death, and this week of waiting is torture to me.”