Here the old man stopped as if overcome with his harrowing confidence.

“For the last five years,” he continued, “my daughter alternates between revivals and relapses, but no new phenomena have appeared.  She suffers more or less from the varied nervous attacks I have briefly described to you, but the paralysis of the legs and the derangement of the natural functions are constant.  The poverty into which we fell, and which alas! is only increasing, obliged me to leave the rooms that I took, in 1829, in the faubourg du Roule.  My daughter cannot endure the fatigue of moving; I came near losing her when I brought her to Paris, and again when I removed her to this house.  Here my worst financial misfortunes have come upon me.  After thirty years in the public service I was made to wait four years before my pension was granted.  I have only received it during the last six months and even then the new government has sternly cut it down to the minimum.”

Godefroid made a gesture of surprise which seemed to ask for a more complete confidence.  The old man so understood it, for he answered immediately, casting a reproachful glance to heaven:—­

“I am one of the thousand victims of political reaction.  I conceal my name because it is the mark for many a revenge.  If the lessons of experience were not always wasted from one generation to another I should warn you, young man, never to adopt the sternness of any policy.  Not that I regret having done my duty; my conscience is perfectly clear on that score; but the powers of to-day have not that solidarity which formerly bound all governments together as governments, no matter how different they might be; if to-day they reward zealous agents it is because they are afraid of them.  The instrument they have used, no matter how faithful it has been, is, sooner or later, cast aside.  You see in me one of the firmest supporters of the government of the elder branch of the Bourbons, as I was later of the Imperial power; yet here I am in penury!  Since I am too proud to beg, they have never dreamed that I suffer untold misery.  Five days ago, monsieur, the doctor who takes care of my daughter, or rather I should say, observes her, told me that he was unable to cure a disease the forms of which varied perpetually.  He says that neurotic patients are the despair of science, for the causes of their conditions are only to be found in some as yet unexplored system.  He advised me to have recourse to a physician who has been called a quack; but he carefully pointed out that this man was a stranger, a Polish Jew, a refugee, and that the Parisian doctors were extremely jealous of certain wonderful cures he had made, and also of the opinion expressed by many that he is very learned and extremely able.  Only, Dr. Berton says, he is very exacting and overbearing.  He selects his patients, and will not allow an instant of his time to be wasted; and he is—­a communist!  His name is Halpersohn.  My grandson has been twice to find him, but he is always too busy to attend to him; he has not been to see us; I fully understand why.”