rself invested with a fortune and unencumbered with a wife."

"And the other?" Saniel said, who had listened silently to this curious
explanation of the situation that Caffie made with the most perfect
good-nature. So grave were the circumstances that he could not help
being amused at this diplomacy.

"I expected your demand," replied the agent with a shrewd smile. "And if
I spoke of this amiable widow it was rather to acquit my conscience than
with any hope of succeeding. However free from prejudices one may be,
one always retains a few. I understand yours, and more than that, I
share them. Happily, what I am now about to tell you is something quite
different. Take her photograph, my dear sir, and look at it while I
talk. A charming face, is it not? She has been finely educated at a
fashionable convent. In a word, a pearl, that you shall wear. And now I
must tell you the flaw, for there is one. Who is blameless? The daughter
of one of our leading actresses, after leaving the convent she returned
to live with her mother. It was there, in this environment-ahem!
ahem!--that an accident happened to her. To be brief, she has a sweet
little child that the father would have recognized assuredly, had he not
been already married. But at least he has provided for its future by
an endowment of two hundred thousand francs, in such a way that whoever
marries the mother and legitimizes the child will enjoy the interest of
this sum until the child's majority. If that ever arrives--these little
creatures are so fragile! You being a physician, you know more about
that than any one. In case of an accident the father will inherit half
the money from his son; and if it seems cruel for an own father to
inherit from his own son, it is quite a different thing when it is a
stranger who receives the fortune. This is all, my dear sir, plainly and
frankly, and I will not do you the injury to suppose that you do not see
the advantages of what I have said to you without need of my insisting
further. If I have not explained clearly--"

"But nothing is more clear."

"--it is the fault of this pain that paralyzes me."

And he groaned while holding his jaw.

"You have a troublesome tooth?" Saniel said, with the tone of a
physician who questions a patient.

"All my teeth trouble me. To tell the truth, they are all going to
pieces."

"Have you consulted a doctor?"

"Neither a doctor nor a dentist. I have faith in medicine, of course;
but when