that is associated with me, perhaps you will be able to banish the remainder, and to recover some of the calm of other days.  I can no longer remember that I have loved you, for my position is such that I have not the refuge of memory; at my age I must remain without a past as without a future; the consolation of the unfortunate is lost to me with everything else.  I cannot rise out of my sorrow to try to find one hour when life was sweet to me; those hours, on the contrary, make me tremble, and I reproach myself for them as if they were a crime.  Thus, whichever way I turn, I find only sadness and sharp regrets; everything is blighted, dishonored for me.”

Standing in the middle of his office he read this hastily written letter breathlessly.  Arrived at the end he looked about him vaguely.  His chair was near his desk; he let himself fall into it and remained there prostrated, holding the letter in his shaking hand.

“Alone!”

It was an October afternoon, dark and muddy; in the Rue des Saints-Peres, in front of the houses that hide the Charity Hospital, coupes were standing, and their long line extended to the Boulevard Saint-Germain, where the coachmen, having left their seats, talked together like persons who were accustomed to meet each other.  At half-past four o’clock, in the deepening twilight, men with grave looks and dark clothes—­members of the Academy of Medicine—­the Tuesday sitting over, issued from the porch, and entered their carriages.  Some of them walked alone, briskly, in a great hurry; others demonstrated a skilful tardiness, stopping to talk politely to a journalist, and to give him notes of the day’s meeting, or continuing, with a ‘confrere’ who was not an Academician, the conversation begun in the room of the ‘pas-perdus’; it was the Bourse of consultations that was just closed.  Not all the members of the Academy have, in truth, a long list of patients to visit; but each one has a vote to give, and they are those whom the candidates surround, trying to win them.

One of the Academicians who appeared the last at the top of the steps was a man of great height but bent figure, with hollow cheeks and pale face lighted by pale blue eyes with a strange expression, both hard and desolate at the same time.  He advanced alone, and his heavy gait and dragging step gave him the appearance of a man sixty years of age, while in other ways he retained a certain youthfulness.  It was Saniel, twenty years older.

Without exchanging a bow or a hand-shake with any one, he descended to the pavement and walked to the boulevard, where he opened the door of a coups whose interior showed a complete ambulant library—­a writing table with paper, ink, and lamp, pockets full of books and pamphlets.

Just as he was about to enter, a voice stopped him.

He turned; it was one of his old pupils, who had recently become a physician in the suburb of Gentilly.

“What is it?” asked Saniel.