f the face,
so that nothing was really seen of it but the forehead, nose, eyes,
cheek-bones, and mouth.

This friend of the revolutionist Lelewel wore a black velvet cap which
came to a point on the brow, and took a high light worthy of the touch
of Rembrandt.

The question of the physician (who has since become so celebrated,
as much for his genius as for his avarice) caused some surprise in
Godefroid's mind, and he said to himself:--

"I wonder if he takes me for a thief."

The answer to this mental question was on the doctor's table and
fireplace. Godefroid thought he was the first to arrive; he was really
the last. Preceding clients had left large offerings behind them; among
them Godefroid noticed piles of twenty and forty-franc gold pieces and
two notes of a thousand francs each. Could that be the product of one
morning? He doubted it, and suspected the Pole of intentional trickery.
Perhaps the grasping but infallible doctor took this method of showing
his clients, mostly rich persons, that gold must be dropped into his
pouch, and not buttons.

Moses Halpersohn was, undoubtedly, largely paid, for he cured, and
he cured precisely those desperate diseases which science declares
incurable. It is not known in Europe that the Slav races possess many
secrets. They have a collection of sovereign remedies, the fruits
of their connection with the Chinese, Persians, Cossacks, Turks, and
Tartars. Certain peasant women in Poland, who pass for witches, cure
insanity radically with the juice of herbs. A vast body of observation,
not codified, exists in Poland on the effects of certain plants, and
certain barks of trees reduced to powder, which are transmitted from
father to son, and family to family, producing cures that are almost
miraculous.

Halpersohn, who for five or six years was called a quack on account
of his powders and herb medicines, had the innate science of a great
physician. Not only had he studied much and observed much, but he had
travelled in every part of Germany, Russia, Persia, and Turkey, whence
he had gathered many a traditionary secret; and as he knew chemistry he
became a living volume of those wonderful recipes scattered among the
wise women, or, as the French call them, the _bonnes femmes_, of every
land to which his feet had gone, following his father, a perambulating
trader.

It must not be thought that the scene in "The Talisman" where Saladin
cures the King of England is a fiction. Halpe