Glady did not flinch; if he had not foreseen the amount he expected the demand, and he continued gazing at his feet.

“You know,” continued Saniel, “that I am the son of peasants; my father was marshal in a poor village of Auvergne.  At school I gave proof of a certain aptitude for work above my comrades, and our cure conceived an affection for me and taught me all he knew.  Then he made me enter a small seminary.  But I had neither the docile mind nor the submissive character that was necessary for this education, and after several years of pranks and punishments, although I was not expelled, I was given to understand that my departure would be hailed with delight.  I then became usher in a small school, but without salary, taking board and lodging as payment.  I passed a good examination and was preparing for my degree, when I left the school owing to a quarrel.  I had made some money by giving private lessons, and I found myself the possessor of nearly eighty francs.  I started for Paris, where I arrived at five o’clock one morning in June, and where I knew, no one.  I had a small trunk containing a few shirts, which obliged me to take a carriage.  I told the coachman to take me to a hotel in the Latin Quarter.  ‘Which hotel?’ he asked; ‘I do not care,’ I answered.  ‘Do you wish to go to the Hotel du Senat?’ The name pleased me; perhaps it was an omen.  He took me to the Hotel du Senat, where, with what I had left of my eighty francs, I paid a month in advance.  I stayed there eight years.”

“That is remarkable.”

“What else could I do?  I knew Latin and Greek as well as any man in France, but as far as anything else was concerned I was as ignorant as a schoolmaster.  The same day I tried to make use of what I knew, and I went to a publisher of classic books, of whom I had heard my professor of Greek literature speak.  After questioning me he gave me a copy of Pindar to prepare with Latin notes, and advanced me thirty francs, which lasted me a month.  I came to Paris with the desire to work, but without having made up my mind what to do.  I went wherever there were lectures, to the Sorbonne, to the College de France, to the Law School, and to the School of Medicine; but it was a month before I came to a decision.  The subtleties of law displeased me, but the study of medicine, depending upon the observation of facts, attracted me, and I decided to become a doctor.”

“A marriage of reason.”

“No, a marriage for love.  Because, if I had consulted reason, it would have told me that to marry medicine when one has nothing—­neither family to sustain you nor relatives to push you—­would be to condemn yourself to a life of trials, of battles, and of misery.  My student life was happy; I worked hard, and by giving lessons in Latin I had enough to eat.  When I received as house-surgeon six, eight, nine hundred francs, I thought it a large fortune, and I would have remained in this position for the