ten years, and had compelled himself to draw six
breaths only, every minute, in the close atmosphere of a cow-house,
adhering all the time to a regimen of exceedingly light diet. "I will be
like that man," thought Raphael to himself. He wanted life at any price,
and so he led the life of a machine in the midst of all the luxury
around him.

The old professor confronted this youthful corpse and shuddered; there
seemed something unnatural about the meagre, enfeebled frame. In the
Marquis, with his eager eyes and careworn forehead, he could hardly
recognize the fresh-cheeked and rosy pupil with the active limbs,
whom he remembered. If the worthy classicist, sage critic, and general
preserver of the traditions of correct taste had read Byron, he would
have thought that he had come on a Manfred when he looked to find Childe
Harold.

"Good day, pere Porriquet," said Raphael, pressing the old
schoolmaster's frozen fingers in his own damp ones; "how are you?"

"I am very well," replied the other, alarmed by the touch of that
feverish hand. "But how about you?"

"Oh, I am hoping to keep myself in health."

"You are engaged in some great work, no doubt?"

"No," Raphael answered. "Exegi monumemtum, pere Porriquet; I have
contributed an important page to science, and have now bidden her
farewell for ever. I scarcely know where my manuscript is."

"The style is no doubt correct?" queried the schoolmaster. "You, I hope,
would never have adopted the barbarous language of the new school, which
fancies it has worked such wonders by discovering Ronsard!"

"My work treats of physiology pure and simple."

"Oh, then, there is no more to be said," the schoolmaster answered.
"Grammar must yield to the exigencies of discovery. Nevertheless, young
man, a lucid and harmonious style--the diction of Massillon, of M. de
Buffon, of the great Racine--a classical style, in short, can never
spoil anything----But, my friend," the schoolmaster interrupted
himself, "I was forgetting the object of my visit, which concerns my own
interests."

Too late Raphael recalled to mind the verbose eloquence and elegant
circumlocutions which in a long professorial career had grown habitual
to his old tutor, and almost regretted that he had admitted him; but
just as he was about to wish to see him safely outside, he promptly
suppressed his secret desire with a stealthy glance at the Magic Skin.
It hung there before him, fastened down upon some white materi