Germain,
where the coachmen, having left their seats, talked together like persons
who were accustomed to meet each other. At half-past four o'clock, in the
deepening twilight, men with grave looks and dark clothes--members of the
Academy of Medicine--the Tuesday sitting over, issued from the porch, and
entered their carriages. Some of them walked alone, briskly, in a great
hurry; others demonstrated a skilful tardiness, stopping to talk politely
to a journalist, and to give him notes of the day's meeting, or
continuing, with a 'confrere' who was not an Academician, the
conversation begun in the room of the 'pas-perdus'; it was the Bourse of
consultations that was just closed. Not all the members of the Academy
have, in truth, a long list of patients to visit; but each one has a vote
to give, and they are those whom the candidates surround, trying to win
them.

One of the Academicians who appeared the last at the top of the steps was
a man of great height but bent figure, with hollow cheeks and pale face
lighted by pale blue eyes with a strange expression, both hard and
desolate at the same time. He advanced alone, and his heavy gait and
dragging step gave him the appearance of a man sixty years of age, while
in other ways he retained a certain youthfulness. It was Saniel, twenty
years older.

Without exchanging a bow or a hand-shake with any one, he descended to
the pavement and walked to the boulevard, where he opened the door of a
coups whose interior showed a complete ambulant library--a writing table
with paper, ink, and lamp, pockets full of books and pamphlets.

Just as he was about to enter, a voice stopped him.

He turned; it was one of his old pupils, who had recently become a
physician in the suburb of Gentilly.

"What is it?" asked Saniel.

"I want to ask you to come and assist me in a curious case of spasms,
where your intervention may be decisive."

"Where?"

"At the Maison-Blanche, a poor woman. What day could you give me?"

"Is it urgent?"

"Yes."

"In that case I will go at once. Give the address to my coachman, and get
in with me."

But at this moment a white-haired man dressed in chestnut velvet, wearing
a felt hat and sabots, came toward them, accompanied by two young men
with whom he discoursed in a loud tone while gesticulating. People turned
to look at them, so original was the appearance of old Brigard, the same
man from head to foot that he had always been.

He came to Saniel w