"I have given it to you twice already, but I have a copy. Here it is."

To be sued by a creditor paralyzed Saniel; he was stunned, crushed,
humiliated, and could only answer stupidly. Taking the bill that the
concierge handed him, he put it in his pocket and stammered a few words.

"You see, doctor, I must say what has been in my heart a long time. You
are my countryman, and I esteem you too much not to speak. In taking
your apartment and engaging your upholsterer, you did too much. You ruin
yourself. Give up your apartment, and take the one opposite that costs
less than half, and you will get on. You will not be obliged to leave
this quarter. What will become of our neighbors if you leave us? You are
a good doctor; everybody knows it and says so. And now, as for my bill,
it is understood that I shall be paid first, shall I not?"

"As soon as I have the money I will pay you."

"It is a promise?"

"I promise you."

"Thank you very much."

"If it could be to-morrow, it would suit me. I am not rich, you know,
but I have always paid the gas-bill for your experiments."

With the paper in his pocket, Saniel returned to Caffie, who was just
going out, and to whom he gave it.

"I will see about it this, evening," said the man of business. "Just
now I am going to dinner. Do not worry. To-morrow I will do what is
necessary. Good-evening. I am dying of hunger."

But three days before, Saniel emptied his purse to soothe his
upholsterer by an instalment as large as he was able to make it, keeping
only five francs for himself, and with the few sous left he could not
go to a restaurant, not even the lowest and cheapest. He could only
buy some bread for his supper, and eat it while working, as he had often
done before.

But when he returned to his rooms he was not in a state of mind to write
an article that must be delivered that evening. Among other things that
he had undertaken was one, and not the least fastidious, which consisted
in giving, by correspondence, advice to the subscribers of a fashion
magazine, or, more exactly speaking, to recommend, in the form of
medical advice, all the cosmetics, depilatories, elixirs, dyes,
essences, oils, creams, soaps, pomades, toothpowders, rouges, and also
all the chemists' specialties, to which their inventors wished to give
an authority that the public, which believes itself acute, refused to
the simple advertisement on the last page. With his ambition and the
career before hi