She waited a moment, looking at him.  Without softening the hardness of his glance, he made a sign to her to continue.

“When I persisted on the consultation, Madame Dammauville recalled what I had said, and she was the first—­you hear?—­the first to pronounce your name.  As you had cured my mother, I had the right to praise you.  With a nature like hers, she would not have understood if I had not done it; she would have believed me ungrateful.  I spoke of your book on the diseases of the spinal cord, which was quite natural; and as she manifested a desire to read it, I offered to lend it to her.”

“Was that natural?”

“With any but Madame Dammauville, no; but she is not frivolous.  I took the book to her two days ago, and she has just told me that, after reading it, she has decided to send for you.”

“I shall certainly not go; she has her own physician.”

“Do not imagine that I have come to ask you to pay her a visit; all is arranged with Monsieur Balzajette, who will write to you or see you, I do not know which.”

“That will be very extraordinary on the part of Balzajette!”

“Perhaps you judge him harshly.  When Madame Dammauville spoke to him of you he did not raise the smallest objection; on the contrary, he praised you.  He says that you are one of the rare young men in whom one may have confidence.  These are his own words that Madame Dammauville told me.”

“What do I care for the opinion of this old beast!”

“I am explaining how it happens that you are called into consultation; it is not because I spoke of you, but because you have inspired Monsieur Balzajette with confidence.  However stupid he may be, he is just to you, and knows your value.”

It was come then, the time for the meeting that he did not wish to believe possible; and it was brought about in such a way that he did not see how he could escape it.  He might refuse Phillis; but Balzajette?  A colleague called him in consultation, and why should he not go?  Had he foreseen this blow he would have left Paris until the trial was over, but he was taken unawares.  What could he say to justify a sudden absence?  He had no mother or brothers who might send for him, and with whom he would be obliged to remain.  Besides, he wished to go to court; and since his testimony would carry considerable weight with the jury, it was his duty to be present on account of Florentin.  It would be a contemptible cowardice to fail in this duty, and more, it would be an imprudence.  In the eyes of the world he must appear to have nothing to fear, and this assurance, this confidence in himself, was one of the conditions of his safety.  Now, if he went to court, and from every point of view it was impossible that he should not go, he would meet Madame Dammauville, as she intended to be carried there if she were unable to go in any other way.  Whether it was at her house, or at the Palais de justice, the meeting was then certain, and in spite of what he had done, circumstances stronger than his will had prepared it and brought it about; nothing that he could do would prevent it.