carefully prescribed rule of diet, so as to soothe the internal
irritation"--here Brisset signified his approval; "and in the second,

a hygienic regimen, to set your general condition right. We all,
therefore, recommend you to go to take the waters in Aix in Savoy; or,

if you like it better, at Mont Dore in Auvergne; the air and the
situation are both pleasanter in Savoy than in the Cantal, but you

will consult your own taste."
Here it was Cameristus who nodded assent.

"These gentlemen," Bianchon continued, "having recognized a slight
affection of the respiratory organs, are agreed as to the utility of

the previous course of treatment that I have prescribed. They think
that there will be no difficulty about restoring you to health, and

that everything depends upon a wise and alternateemployment of these
various means. And----"

"And that is the cause of the milk in the cocoanut," said Raphael,
with a smile, as he led Horace into his study to pay the fees for this

useless consultation.
"Their conclusions are logical," the young doctor replied. "Cameristus

feels, Brisset examines, Maugredie doubts. Has not man a soul, a body,
and an intelligence? One of these three elemental constituents always

influences us more or less strongly; there will always be the personal
element in human science. Believe me, Raphael, we effect no cures; we

only assist them. Another system--the use of mild remedies while
Nature exerts her powers--lies between the extremes of theory of

Brisset and Cameristus, but one ought to have known the patient for
some ten years or so to obtain a good result on these lines. Negation

lies at the back of all medicine, as in every other science. So
endeavor to live wholesomely; try a trip to Savoy; the best course is,

and always will be, to trust to Nature."
It was a month later, on a fine summer-like evening, that several

people, who were taking the waters at Aix, returned from the promenade
and met together in the salons of the Club. Raphael remained alone by

a window for a long time. His back was turned upon the gathering, and
he himself was deep in those involuntary musings in which thoughts

arise in succession and fade away, shaping themselves indistinctly,
passing over us like thin, almost colorless clouds. Melancholy is

sweet to us then, and delight is shadowy, for the soul is half asleep.
Valentin gave himself up to this life of sensations; he was steeping

himself in the warm, soft twilight, enjoying the pure air with the
scent of the hills in it, happy in that he felt no pain, and had

tranquilized his threatening Magic Skin at last. It grew cooler as the
red glow of the sunset faded on the mountain peaks; he shut the window

and left his place.
"Will you be so kind as not to close the windows, sir?" said an old

lady; "we are being stifled----"
The peculiarly sharp and jarring tones in which the phrase was uttered

grated on Raphael's ears; it fell on them like an indiscreet remark
let slip by some man in whose friendship we would fain believe, a word

which reveals unsuspected depths of selfishness and destroys some
pleasing sentimentalillusion of ours. The Marquis glanced, with the

cool inscrutable expression of a diplomatist, at the old lady, called
a servant, and, when he came, curtly bade him:

"Open that window."
Great surprise was clearly expressed on all faces at the words. The

whole roomful began to whisper to each other, and turned their eyes
upon the invalid, as though he had given some serious offence.

Raphael, who had never quite managed to rid himself of the bashfulness
of his early youth, felt a momentaryconfusion; then he shook off his

torpor, exerted his faculties, and asked himself the meaning of this
strange scene.

A sudden and rapid impulse quickened his brain; the past weeks
appeared before him in a clear and definitevision; the reasons for

the feelings he inspired in others stood out for him in relief, like
the veins of some corpse which a naturalist, by some cunningly

contrived injection, has colored so as to show their least
ramifications.

He discerned himself in this fleeting picture; he followed out his own
life in it, thought by thought, day after day. He saw himself, not

without astonishment, an absentgloomy figure in the midst of these
lively folk, always musing over his own fate, always absorbed by his

own sufferings, seeminglyimpatient of the most harmless chat. He saw
how he had shunned the ephemeral intimacies that travelers are so

ready to establish--no doubt because they feel sure of never meeting
each other again--and how he had taken little heed of those about him.

He saw himself like the rocks without, unmoved by the caresses or the
stormy surgings of the waves.

Then, by a gift of insight seldom accorded, he read the thoughts of
all those about him. The light of a candle revealed the sardonic

profile and yellow cranium of an old man; he remembered now that he
had won from him, and had never proposed that the other should have

his revenge; a little further on he saw a pretty woman, whose lively
advances he had met with frigid coolness; there was not a face there

that did not reproach him with some wrong done, inexplicably to all
appearance, but the real offence in every case lay in some

mortification, some invisible hurt dealt to self-love. He had
unintentionally jarred on all the small susceptibilities of the circle

round about him.
His guests on various occasions, and those to whom he had lent his

horses, had taken offence at his luxurious ways; their ungraciousness
had been a surprise to him; he had spared them further humiliations of

that kind, and they had considered that he looked down upon them, and
had accused him of haughtiness ever since. He could read their inmost

thoughts as he fathomed their natures in this way. Society with its
polish and varnish grew loathsome to him. He was envied and hated for

his wealth and superior ability; his reserve baffled the inquisitive;
his humility seemed like haughtiness to these petty superficial

natures. He guessed the secret unpardonable crime which he had
committed against them; he had overstepped the limits of the

jurisdiction of their mediocrity. He had resisted their inquisitorial
tyranny; he could dispense with their society; and all of them,

therefore, had instinctively combined to make him feel their power,
and to take revenge upon this incipient royalty by submitting him to a

kind of ostracism, and so teaching him that they in their turn could
do without him.

Pity came over him, first of all, at this aspect of mankind, but very
soon he shuddered at the thought of the power that came thus, at will,

and flung aside for him the veil of flesh under which the moral nature
is hidden away. He closed his eyes, so as to see no more. A black

curtain was drawn all at once over this unluckyphantom show of truth;
but still he found himself in the terrible loneliness that surrounds

every power and dominion. Just then a violent fit of coughing seized
him. Far from receiving one single word--indifferent, and meaningless,

it is true, but still containing, among well-bred people brought
together by chance, at least some pretence of civil commiseration--he

now heard hostile ejaculations and muttered complaints. Society there
assembled disdained any pantomime on his account, perhaps because he

had gauged its real nature too well.
"His complaint is contagious."

"The president of the Club ought to forbid him to enter the salon."
"It is contrary to all rules and regulations to cough in that way!"

"When a man is as ill as that, he ought not to come to take the
waters----"

"He will drive me away from the place."
Raphael rose and walked about the rooms to screen himself from their

unanimous execrations. He thought to find a shelter, and went up to a
young pretty lady who sat doing nothing, minded to address some pretty

speeches to her; but as he came towards her, she turned her back upon
him, and pretended to be watching the dancers. Raphael feared lest he

might have made use of the talisman already that evening; and feeling
that he had neither the wish nor the courage to break into the

conversation, he left the salon and took refuge in the billiard-room.
No one there greeted him, nobody spoke to him, no one sent so much as

a friendly glance in his direction. His turn of mind, naturally
meditative, had discovered instinctively the general grounds and

reasons for the aversion he inspired. This little world was obeying,
unconsciously perhaps, the sovereign law which rules over polite

society; its inexorable nature was becoming apparent in its entirety
to Raphael's eyes. A glance into the past showed it to him, as a type

completely realized in Foedora.
He would no more meet with sympathy here for his bodily ills than he

had received it at her hands for the distress in his heart. The
fashionable world expels every suffering creature from its midst, just

as the body of a man in robust health rejects any germ of disease. The