us at
my own expense. However, there are accessory reasons for which I have
chosen such strange companions: deformed slaves are cheap and besides
that, certain investigations afford me inestimable and peculiar
satisfaction. But this cannot interest a young girl."

"Indeed it does!" cried Paula. "So far as I have understood Philippus
when he explains some details of natural history...."

"Stay," laughed Rufinus, "our friend will take good care not to explain
this. He regards it as folly, and all he will admit is that no surgeon
or student could wish for better, more willing, or more amusing
house-mates than my cripples."

"They are grateful to you," cried Paula.

"Grateful?" asked the old man. "That is true sometimes, no doubt; still,
gratitude is a tribute on which no wise man ever reckons. Now I have
told you enough; for the sake of Philippus we will let the rest pass."

"No, no," said Paula putting up entreating hands, and Rufinus answered
gaily:

"Who can refuse you anything? I will cut it short, but you must pay good
heed.--Well then Man is the standard of all things. Do you understand
that?"

"Yes, I often hear you say so. Things you mean are only what they seem
to us."

"To us, you say, because we--you and I and the rest of us here--are
sound in body and mind. And we must regard all things--being God's
handiwork--as by nature sound and normal. Thus we are justified in
requiring that man, who gives the standard for them shall, first and
foremost, himself be sound and normal. Can a carpenter measure straight
planks properly with a crooked or sloping rod?"

"Certainly not."

"Then you will understand how I came to ask myself: 'Do sickly,
crippled, and deformed men measure things by a different standard to
that of sound men? And might it not be a useful task to investigate how
their estimates differ from ours?'"

"And have your researches among your cripples led to any results?"

"To many important ones," the old man declared; but Philippus
interrupted him with a loud: "Oho!" adding that his friend was in
too great a hurry to deduce laws from individual cases. Many of his
observations were, no doubt, of considerable interest.... Here Rufinus
broke in with some vehemence, and the discussion would have become a
dispute if Paula had not intervened by requesting her zealous host to
give her the results, at any rate, of his studies.

"I find," said Rufinus very confidently, as he stroked down his long
bea