at Madou was very ill. "A
brain-fever!" he said, rubbing his hands in glee.

This Dr. Hirsch was a terrible man. His head was stuffed full of
all sorts of Utopian ideas, of impracticable theories, and notions
absolutely without method. His studies had been too desultory to amount
to anything. He had mastered a few Latin phrases, and covered his real
ignorance by a smattering of the science of medicine as practised among
the Indians and the Chinese. He even had a strong leaning toward the
magic arts, and when a human life was intrusted to his care he took that
opportunity to try some experiments. Madame Moronval was inclined to
call in another physician, but the principal, less compassionate, and
unwilling to incur the additional expense, determined to leave the case
solely in the hands of Dr. Hirsch. Wishing to have no interference,
this singular physician pretended that the disease was contagious, and
ordered Madou's bed to be placed at the end of the garden in an old
hot-house. For a week he tried on his little victim every drug he had
ever heard of, the child making no more resistance than a sick dog would
have done. When the doctor, armed with his bottles and his powders,
entered the hot-house, the "children of the sun," to whose minds a
physician was always more or less of a magician, gathered about the door
and listened, saying to each other in awed tones, "What is he going
to do now to Madou?" But the doctor locked the door, and peremptorily
ordered the children from its vicinity, telling them that they would be
ill too, that Madou's illness was contagious; and this last idea added
additional mystery to that corner of the garden.

Jack, nevertheless, desired to see his friend so much that he alone of
all the boys would have gladly passed the threshold, had it not been too
closely guarded. One day, however, he seized an occasion when the doctor
had gone in search of some forgotten drug, and crept softly into the
improvised infirmary.

It was one of those half rustic buildings which are used as a shelter
for rakes and hoes, or even to house some tender plants. Close by
the side of Madou's iron bed, in the corner, was a pile of earthen
flowerpots; a broken trellis, some panes of glass, and a bundle of dried
roots, completed the dismal picture; and in the chimney, as if for the
protection of some fragile tropical plant, flickered a tiny fire.

Madou was not asleep. His poor little thin face had still the same
exp