fistula in
its most frequent habitat,--but I never saw him do more than look as if
he wanted to cut a good dollop out of a patient he was examining. The
short, square, substantial man with iron-gray hair, ruddy face, and
white apron is Baron Larrey, Napoleon's favorite surgeon, the most
honest man he ever saw,--it is reputed that he called him. To go round
the Hotel des Invalides with Larrey was to live over the campaigns
of Napoleon, to look on the sun of Austerlitz, to hear the cannons of
Marengo, to struggle through the icy waters of the Beresina, to shiver
in the snows of the Russian retreat, and to gaze through the battle
smoke upon the last charge of the red lancers on the redder field of
Waterloo. Larrey was still strong and sturdy as I saw him, and few
portraits remain printed in livelier colors on the tablet of my memory.

Leave the little group of students which gathers about Larrey beneath
the gilded dome of the Invalides and follow me to the Hotel Dieu, where
rules and reigns the master-surgeon of his day, at least so far as
Paris and France are concerned,--the illustrious Baron Dupuytren. No
man disputed his reign, some envied his supremacy. Lisfranc shrugged his
shoulders as he spoke of "ce grand homme de l'autre cots de la riviere,"
that great man on the other side of the river, but the great man he
remained, until he bowed before the mandate which none may disobey.
"Three times," said Bouillaud, "did the apoplectic thunderbolt fall on
that robust brain,"--it yielded at last as the old bald cliff that
is riven and crashes down into the valley. I saw him before the
first thunderbolt had descended: a square, solid man, with a high and
full-domed head, oracular in his utterances, indifferent to those around
him, sometimes, it was said, very rough with them. He spoke in low, even
tones, with quiet fluency, and was listened to with that hush of rapt
attention which I have hardly seen in any circle of listeners unless
when such men as ex-President John Quincy Adams or Daniel Webster were
the speakers. I do not think that Dupuytren has left a record which
explains his influence, but in point of fact he dominated those around
him in a remarkable manner. You must have all witnessed something of the
same kind. The personal presence of some men carries command with it,
and their accents silence the crowd around them, when the same words
from other lips might fall comparatively unheeded.

As for Lisfranc, I can say