a simple natural
phenomenon was forced in the minds of the people into a significance it
did not possess.

"And if the little comet which my old foster father discovered last week
continues to increase," added the physician, "so that its tail spreads
over a portion of the sky, the panic will reach its highest pitch; I can
see already that they will behave like mad creatures."

"But a comet really does portend war, drought, plague, and famine," said
Pulcheria, with full conviction; and Paula added:

"So I have always believed."

"But very wrongly," replied the leech. "There are a thousand reasons
to the contrary; and it is a crime to confirm the mob in such a
superstition. It fills them with grief and alarms; and, would you
believe it--such anguish of mind, especially when the Nile is so low
and there is more sickness than usual, gives rise to numberless forms of
disease? We shall have our hands full, Rufinus."

"I am yours to command," replied the old man. "But at the same time,
if the tailed wanderer must do some mischief, I would rather it should
break folks' arms and legs than turn their brains."

"What a wish!" exclaimed Paula. "But you often say things--and I see
things about you too--which seem to me extraordinary. Yesterday you
promised...."

"To explain to you why I gather about me so many of God's creatures who
have to struggle under the burden of life as cripples, or with injured
limbs."

"Just so," replied Paula. "Nothing can be more truly merciful than to
render life bearable to such hapless beings...."

"But still, you think," interrupted the eager old man, "that this noble
motive alone would hardly account for the old oddity's riding his hobby
so hard.--Well, you are right. From my earliest youth the structure of
the bones in man and beast has captivated me exceedingly; and just as
collectors of horns, when once they have a complete series of every
variety of stag, roe, and gazelle, set to work with fresh zeal to find
deformed or monstrous growths, so I have found pleasure in studying
every kind of malformation and injury in the bones of men and beasts."

"And to remedy them," added Philippus. "It has been his passion from
childhood.

"And the passion has grown upon me since I broke my own hip bone
and know what it means," the old man went on. "With the help of my
fellow-student there, from a mere dilettante I became a practised
surgeon; and, what is more, I am one of those who serve Esculapi