from an ethnological point of view.

"Celtic, Celtic!" he said.

"Celtic!" cried Madame Tentaillon, who had perhaps confounded the word
with hydrocephalous. "Poor lad! is it dangerous?"

"That depends," returned the Doctor grimly. And then once more addressing
the boy: "And what do you do for your living, Jean-Marie?" he inquired.

"I tumble," was the answer.

"So! Tumble?" repeated Desprez. "Probably healthful. I hazard the guess,
Madame Tentaillon, that tumbling is a healthful way of life. And have you
never done anything else but tumble?"

"Before I learned that, I used to steal," answered Jean-Marie gravely.

"Upon my word!" cried the Doctor. "You are a nice little man for your
age.--Madame, when my _confrere_ comes from Bourron, you will communicate
my unfavourable opinion. I leave the case in his hands; but of course, on
any alarming symptom, above all if there should be a sign of rally, do
not hesitate to knock me up. I am a doctor no longer, I thank God; but I
have been one. Good-night, madame.--Good sleep to you, Jean-Marie."

CHAPTER II

MORNING TALK

Doctor Desprez always rose early. Before the smoke arose, before the
first cart rattled over the bridge to the day's labour in the fields, he
was to be found wandering in his garden. Now he would pick a bunch of
grapes; now he would eat a big pear under the trellis; now he would draw
all sorts of fancies on the path with the end of his cane; now he would
go down and watch the river running endlessly past the timber
landing-place at which he moored his boat. There was no time, he used to
say, for making theories like the early morning. "I rise earlier than any
one else in the village," he once boasted. "It is a fair consequence that
I know more and wish to do less with my knowledge."

The Doctor was a connoisseur of sunrises, and loved a good theatrical
effect to usher in the day. He had a theory of dew, by which he could
predict the weather. Indeed, most things served him to that end: the
sound of the bells from all the neighbouring villages, the smell of the
forest, the visits and the behaviour of both birds and fishes, the look
of the plants in his garden, the disposition of cloud, the colour of the
light, and last, although not least, the arsenal of meteorological
instruments in a louvre-boarded hutch upon the lawn. Ever since he had
settled at Gretz, he had been growing more and more into the local
meteorologist, the unpaid champion of