ion. I always saw him with that smile on
his face, nor had I any need to look through keyholes; and I have drawn
him so, as he loved to appear, in his Richelieu-Brummel attitude.
History will attend to the statesman. I have exhibited him, introducing
him at long range in my fictitious drama, as the worldly creature that
he was and wished to be, being well assured that in his lifetime it
would not have offended him to be so presented.

This is what I had to say. And now, having made these declarations in
all frankness, let us return to work with all speed. My preface will
seem a little short, and the curious reader will seek in vain therein
the anticipated piquancy. So much the worse for him. Brief as this page
may be, it is three times too long for me. Prefaces have this
disadvantage, that they prevent one from writing books.

ALPHONSE DAUDET.

I.

DOCTOR JENKINS' PATIENTS.

Standing on the stoop of his little house on Rue de Lisbonne, freshly
shaved, with sparkling eye, lips slightly parted, long hair tinged with
gray falling over a broad coat-collar, square-shouldered, robust, and
sound as an oak, the illustrious Irish doctor, Robert Jenkins,
chevalier of the Medjidie and of the distinguished order of Charles
III. of Spain, member of several learned and benevolent societies,
founder and president of the Work of Bethlehem,--in a word, Jenkins,
the Jenkins of the Jenkins Arsenical Pills, that is to say, the
fashionable physician of the year 1864, and the busiest man in Paris,
was on the point of entering his carriage, one morning toward the end
of November, when a window on the first floor looking on the inner
courtyard was thrown open, and a woman's voice timidly inquired:

"Shall you return to breakfast, Robert?"

Oh! what a bright, affectionate smile it was that suddenly illumined
that handsome, apostle-like face, and how readily one could divine, in
the loving good-morning that his eyes sent up to the warm white
peignoir visible behind the parted hangings, one of those tranquil,
undoubting conjugal passions, which custom binds with its most flexible
and strongest bonds.

"No, Madame Jenkins"--he loved to give her thus publicly her title of
legitimate wife, as if he felt a secret satisfaction therein, a sort of
salve to his conscience with respect to the woman who made life so
attractive to him--"No, do not expect me this morning. I am to
breakfast on Place Vendome."

"Ah! yes, the Nabob," said th