to that of a man of whom it is simply stated that "he is witty." Genius
always presupposes moral insight. This insight may be applied to a
special subject; but he who can see a flower must be able to see the
sun. The man who on hearing a diplomate he has saved ask, "How is the
Emperor?" could say, "The courtier is alive; the man will follow!"--that
man is not merely a surgeon or a physician, he is prodigiously witty
also. Hence a patient and diligent student of human nature will admit
Desplein's exorbitant pretensions, and believe--as he himself believed
--that he might have been no less great as a minister than he was as a
surgeon.

Among the riddles which Desplein's life presents to many of his
contemporaries, we have chosen one of the most interesting, because the
answer is to be found at the end of the narrative, and will avenge him
for some foolish charges.

Of all the students in Desplein's hospital, Horace Bianchon was one of
those to whom he most warmly attached himself. Before being a house
surgeon at the Hotel-Dieu, Horace Bianchon had been a medical student
lodging in a squalid boarding house in the _Quartier Latin_, known as the
Maison Vauquer. This poor young man had felt there the gnawing of that
burning poverty which is a sort of crucible from which great talents are
to emerge as pure and incorruptible as diamonds, which may be subjected
to any shock without being crushed. In the fierce fire of their
unbridled passions they acquire the most impeccable honesty, and get
into the habit of fighting the battles which await genius with the
constant work by which they coerce their cheated appetites.

Horace was an upright young fellow, incapable of tergiversation on a
matter of honor, going to the point without waste of words, and as ready