ng the other half. A very
old friend of mine is an attorney, now retired, who told me that for
fifteen years past notaries and lawyers have distrusted their clients
quite as much as their adversaries. Your son is a pleader; has he never
found himself compromised by the client for whom he held a brief?"

"Very often," said Victorin, with a smile.

"And what is the cause of this deep-seated evil?" asked the Baroness.

"The decay of religion," said Bianchon, "and the pre-eminence of
finance, which is simply solidified selfishness. Money used not to
be everything; there were some kinds of superiority that ranked above
it--nobility, genius, service done to the State. But nowadays the law
takes wealth as the universal standard, and regards it as the measure
of public capacity. Certain magistrates are ineligible to the Chamber;
Jean-Jacques Rousseau would be ineligible! The perpetual subdivision of
estate compels every man to take care of himself from the age of twenty.

"Well, then, between the necessity for making a fortune and the
depravity of speculation there is no check or hindrance; for the
religious sense is wholly lacking in France, in spite of the laudable
endeavors of those who are working for a Catholic revival. And this is
the opinion of every man who, like me, studies society at the core."

"And you have few pleasures?" said Hortense.

"The true physician, madame, is in love with his science," replied the
doctor. "He is sustained by that passion as much as by the sense of his
usefulness to society.

"At this very time you see in me a sort of scientific rapture, and many
superficial judges would regard me as a man devoid of feeling. I have
to announce a discovery to-morrow to the College of Medicine, for I am
studying a disease that had disappeared--a mortal disease for which no
cure is known in temperate climates, though it is curable in the West
Indies--a malady known here in the Middle Ages. A noble fight is that
of the physician against such a disease. For the last ten days I have
thought of nothing but these cases--for there are two, a husband and
wife.--Are they not connections of yours? For you, madame, are surely
Monsieur Crevel's daughter?" said he, addressing Celestine.

"What, is my father your patient?" asked Celestine. "Living in the Rue
Barbet-de-Jouy?"

"Precisely so," said Bianchon.

"And the disease is inevitably fatal?" said Victorin in dismay.

"I will go to see him," said Celestine,