ettle by the
most relevant objections. Besides, was he not educating the boy? And
education, philosophers are agreed, is the most philosophical of duties.
What can be more heavenly to poor mankind than to have one's hobby grow
into a duty to the State? Then, indeed, do the ways of life become ways
of pleasantness. Never had the Doctor seen reason to be more content with
his endowments. Philosophy flowed smoothly from his lips. He was so agile
a dialectician that he could trace his nonsense, when challenged, back to
some root in sense, and prove it to be a sort of flower upon his system.
He slipped out of antinomies like a fish, and left his disciple
marvelling at the rabbi's depth.

Moreover, deep down in his heart the Doctor was disappointed with the
ill-success of his more formal education. A boy, chosen by so acute an
observer for his aptitude, and guided along the path of learning by so
philosophic an instructor, was bound, by the nature of the universe, to
make a more obvious and lasting advance. Now Jean-Marie was slow in all
things, impenetrable in others; and his power of forgetting was fully on
a level with his power to learn. Therefore the Doctor cherished his
peripatetic lectures, to which the boy attended, which he generally
appeared to enjoy, and by which he often profited.

Many and many were the talks they had together; and health and moderation
proved the subject of the Doctor's divagations. To these he lovingly
returned.

"I lead you," he would say, "by the green pastures. My system, my
beliefs, my medicines, are resumed in one phrase--to avoid excess.
Blessed nature, healthy, temperate nature, abhors and exterminates
excess. Human law, in this matter, imitates at a great distance her
provisions; and we must strive to supplement the efforts of the law. Yes,
boy, we must be a law to ourselves and for our neighbours--_lex
armata_--armed, emphatic, tyrannous law. If you see a crapulous human
ruin snuffing, dash from him his box! The judge, though in a way an
admission of disease, is less offensive to me than either the doctor or
the priest. Above all the doctor--the doctor and the purulent trash and
garbage of his pharmacopoeia! Pure air--from the neighbourhood of a
pinetum for the sake of the turpentine--unadulterated wine, and the
reflections of an unsophisticated spirit in the presence of the works of
nature--these, my boy, are the best medical appliances and the best
religious comforts. Devote yours