etted that I had asked my employer neither where to insert the
lancet nor how to stop the bleeding. I eyed the brawn in the chair, so
full of animal life and rude health--no, strike at random I could not!
I took his arm and asked insinuatingly, "Now, where do you usually
have it done?" "Sometimes here, sometimes there," he answered. Joy! I
remembered a bottle of leeches on the shelf. I felt the man's pulse
and lifted his eyelids with trembling fingers. "In your state," said
I, "it would be a crime to bleed you. What you want is leeches." "You
think so?" he asked--"how many?" "Oh, half-a-dozen--to begin with."
In my sweating hurry I forgot (if I had ever known) that the bottle
contained but three. "No," said I, "we'll start with a couple and work
up by degrees." He took them on his palm and turned them over with a
stubby forefinger. "Funny little beasts!" said he and marched out of
the shop into the sunshine. To this day when recounting his Peninsular
exploits he omits his narrowest escape.

I can hardly describe the effect of this ridiculous adventure upon my
nerves. My heart sank whenever a plethoric customer entered the shop,
and I caught fright or snatched relief even from the weight of a
footfall or the size of a shadow in my doorway. A dozen times in
intervals of leisure I reached down the bottle from its shelf and
studied my one remaining leech. A horrible suspicion possessed me that
the little brute was dead. He remained at any rate completely torpid,
though I coaxed him almost in agony to show some sign of life.
Obviously the bottle contained nothing to nourish him; to offer him my
own blood would be to disable him for another patient. On the fourth
afternoon I went so far as to try him on the back of my hand. I waited
five minutes; he gave no sign. Then, startled by a footstep outside, I
popped him hurriedly back in his bottle.

A scraggy, hawk-nosed trooper of hussars entered and flung himself
into my chair demanding a shave. In my confusion I had lathered his
chin and set to work before giving his face any particular attention.
He had started a grumble at being overworked (he was just off duty and
smelt potently of the stable), but sat silent as men usually do at the
first scrape of the razor. On looking down I saw in a flash that this
was not the reason. He was one of the troopers whose odd jobs I had
done at the Posada del Rio in Huerta, an ill-conditioned Norman called
Michu--Pierre Michu. Since our meeti