the things that appertain to glory; but I have no doubt it
may be useful in liver complaint. Thence, perhaps, its wide popularity
among physicians.

One morning early, Jean-Marie led forth the Doctor's noddy, opened the
gate, and mounted to the driving-seat. The Doctor followed, arrayed from
top to toe in spotless linen, armed with an immense flesh-coloured
umbrella, and girt with a botanical case on a baldric; and the equipage
drove off smartly in a breeze of its own provocation. They were bound for
Franchard, to collect plants, with an eye to the "Comparative
Pharmacopoeia."

A little rattling on the open roads, and they came to the borders of the
forest and struck into an unfrequented track; the noddy yawed softly over
the sand, with an accompaniment of snapping twigs. There was a great,
green, softly murmuring cloud of congregated foliage overhead. In the
arcades of the forest the air retained the freshness of the night. The
athletic bearing of the trees, each carrying its leafy mountain, pleased
the mind like so many statues; and the lines of the trunk led the eye
admiringly upward to where the extreme leaves sparkled in a patch of
azure. Squirrels leaped in mid-air. It was a proper spot for a devotee of
the goddess Hygieia.

"Have you been to Franchard, Jean-Marie?" inquired the Doctor. "I fancy
not."

"Never," replied the boy.

"It is a ruin in a gorge," continued Desprez, adopting his expository
voice; "the ruin of a hermitage and chapel. History tells us much of
Franchard; how the recluse was often slain by robbers; how he lived on a
most insufficient diet; how he was expected to pass his days in prayer. A
letter is preserved, addressed to one of these solitaries by the superior
of his order, full of admirable hygienic advice; bidding him go from his
book to praying, and so back again, for variety's sake, and when he was
weary of both to stroll about his garden and observe the honey-bees. It
is to this day my own system. You must often have remarked me leaving the
'Pharmacopoeia'--often even in the middle of a phrase--to come forth
into the sun and air. I admire the writer of that letter from my heart;
he was a man of thought on the most important subjects. But, indeed, had
I lived in the Middle Ages (I am heartily glad that I did not) I should
have been an eremite myself--if I had not been a professed buffoon, that
is. These were the only philosophical lives yet open: laughter or prayer;
sneers, we migh