“‘Six months!’ I exclaimed.  ’You wretch of a doctor, tell me, then, to let my beard and nails grow like Nebuchadnezzar.  Six months!  You do not know how I detest the country, partridges, rabbits and all.  For heaven’s sake, find some other remedy for me.’

“‘There is homoeopathy,’ said he, smiling.  ’Hahnemann is quite the fashion now.’

“‘Let us have homoeopathy!’

“’You know the principles of the system:  ‘Similia similibus!’ If you have fever, redouble it; if you have smallpox, be inoculated with a triple dose.  So far as you are concerned, you are a little used up and ‘blase’, as we all are in this Babylon of ours; have recourse, then, as a remedy, to the very excesses which have brought you into this state.  Homoeopathize yourself morally.  It may cure you, it may kill you; I wash my hands of it.’

“The doctor was joking, I said to myself after he had left.  Does he think that passions are like the Wandering Jew’s five sous, that there is nothing to do but to put your hand in your pocket and take them out at your convenience when necessary.  However, this idea, strange as it seemed, struck me forcibly.  I decided to try it.

“The next day at seven o’clock in the evening, I was rolling along the road to Lyons.  Eight days later, I was rowing in a boat on Lake Geneva.  For a long time I had wanted to go to Switzerland, and it seemed as if I could not have chosen a better time.  I hoped that the fresh mountain air and the soft pure breezes from the lakes would communicate some of their calm serenity to my heart and brain.

“There is something in Parisian life, I do not know what, so exclusive and hardening, that it ends by making one irresponsive to sensations of a more simple order.

“‘My kingdom for the gutter in the Rue du Bac!’ I exclaimed with Madame de Stael from the height of the Coppet terrace.  The spectacle of nature interests only contemplative and religious minds powerfully.  Mine was neither the one nor the other.  My habits of analysis and observation make me find more attraction in a characteristic face than in a magnificent landscape; I prefer the exercising of thought to the careless gratification of ecstasy, the study of flesh and soul to earthly horizons, of human passions to a perfectly pure atmosphere.

“I met at Geneva an Englishman, who was as morose as myself.  We vented our spleen in common and were both bored together.  We travelled thus through the Oberland and the best part of Valais; we were often rolled up in our travelling robes in the depths of the carriage, and fast asleep when the most beautiful points of interest were in sight.

“From Valais we went to Mont-Blanc, and one night we arrived at Chamounix—­”

“Did you see any idiots in Valais?” suddenly interrupted Marillac, as he filled his pipe the second time.

“Several, and they were all horrible.”

“Do you not think we might compose something with an idiot in it?  It might be rather taking.”