In five minutes Traverse was in the office of the hotel, inquiring for

a waiter to show him up into 555.

One was ordered to attend him, who led the way up several flights of

stairs and around divers galleries, until he opened a door and ushered

the doctor immediately into the sick room.

There was a little, old, dried-up Frenchman in a blue night-cap,

extended on a bed in the middle of the room and covered with a white

counterpane that clung close to his rigid form as to a corpse.

And there was a little, old, dried-up Frenchwoman in a brown merino

gown and a high-crowned muslin cap who hopped and chattered about the

bed like a frightened magpie.

"Ou! Monsieur le Docteur!" she screamed, jumping at Traverse in a way

to make him start back; "Ou, Monsieur le Docteur, I am very happy you

to see! Voilà mon frère! Behold my brother! He is ill! He is verra ill!

He is dead! He is verra dead!"

"I hope not," said Traverse, approaching the bed.

"Voilà, behold! Mon dieu, he is verra still! He is verra cold! He is

verra dead! What can you, mon frère, my brother to save?"

"Be composed, madam, if you please, and allow me to examine my

patient," said Traverse.

"Ma foi! I know not what you speak 'compose.' What can you my brother

to save?"

"Much, I hope, madam, but you must leave me to examine my patient and

not interrupt me," said Traverse, passing his hand over the naked chest

of the sick man.

"Mon Dieu! I know not 'exam' and 'interrupt'! and I know not what can

you mon frère to save!"

"If you don't hush parley-vooing, the doctor can do nothink, mum," said

the waiter, in a respectful tone.

Traverse found his patient in a bad condition--in a stupor, if not in a

state of positive insensibility. The surface of his body was cold as

ice, and apparently without the least vitality. If he was not, as his

sister had expressed it, "very dead," he was certainly "next to it."

By close questioning, and by putting his questions in various forms,

the doctor learned from the chattering little magpie of a Frenchwoman

that the patient had been ill for nine days; that he had been under the

care of Monsieur le Doctor Cartiere; that there had been a consultation

of physicians; that they had prescribed for him and given him over:

that le Docteur Cartiere still attended him, but was at this instant in

attendance as accoucheur to a lady in extreme danger, whom he could not

leave; but Doctor Cartiere had directed them, in his unavoidable

absence, to call in the skilful, the talented, the soon to be

illustrious young Docteur Rocque, who was also near at hand.




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