“I expected your demand,” replied the agent with a shrewd smile.  “And if I spoke of this amiable widow it was rather to acquit my conscience than with any hope of succeeding.  However free from prejudices one may be, one always retains a few.  I understand yours, and more than that, I share them.  Happily, what I am now about to tell you is something quite different.  Take her photograph, my dear sir, and look at it while I talk.  A charming face, is it not?  She has been finely educated at a fashionable convent.  In a word, a pearl, that you shall wear.  And now I must tell you the flaw, for there is one.  Who is blameless?  The daughter of one of our leading actresses, after leaving the convent she returned to live with her mother.  It was there, in this environment-ahem! ahem!—­that an accident happened to her.  To be brief, she has a sweet little child that the father would have recognized assuredly, had he not been already married.  But at least he has provided for its future by an endowment of two hundred thousand francs, in such a way that whoever marries the mother and legitimizes the child will enjoy the interest of this sum until the child’s majority.  If that ever arrives—­these little creatures are so fragile!  You being a physician, you know more about that than any one.  In case of an accident the father will inherit half the money from his son; and if it seems cruel for an own father to inherit from his own son, it is quite a different thing when it is a stranger who receives the fortune.  This is all, my dear sir, plainly and frankly, and I will not do you the injury to suppose that you do not see the advantages of what I have said to you without need of my insisting further.  If I have not explained clearly,”

“But nothing is more clear.”

“—­it is the fault of this pain that paralyzes me.”

And he groaned while holding his jaw.

“You have a troublesome tooth?” Saniel said, with the tone of a physician who questions a patient.

“All my teeth trouble me.  To tell the truth, they are all going to pieces.”

“Have you consulted a doctor?”

“Neither a doctor nor a dentist.  I have faith in medicine, of course; but when I consult doctors, which seldom happens, I notice that they think much more of their own affairs than of what I am saying, and that keeps me away from them.  But, my dear sir, when a client consults me, I put myself in his place.”

While he spoke, Saniel examined him, which he had not done until this moment, and he saw the characteristic signs of rapid consumption.  His clothes hung on him as if made for a man twice his size, and his face was red and shining, as if he were covered with a coating of cherry jelly.

“Will you show me your teeth?” he asked.  “It may be possible to relieve your sufferings.”

“Do you think so?”

The examination did not last long.

“Your mouth is often dry, is it not?” he asked.