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The Atheist's Mass by Honoré de Balzac
page 6 of 24 (25%)
to pledge his cloak for a friend as to give him his time and his night
hours. Horace, in short, was one of those friends who are never anxious
as to what they may get in return for what they give, feeling sure that
they will in their turn get more than they give. Most of his friends
felt for him that deeply-seated respect which is inspired by
unostentatious virtue, and many of them dreaded his censure. But Horace
made no pedantic display of his qualities. He was neither a puritan nor
a preacher; he could swear with a grace as he gave his advice, and was
always ready for a jollification when occasion offered. A jolly
companion, not more prudish than a trooper, as frank and outspoken--not
as a sailor, for nowadays sailors are wily diplomates--but as an honest
man who has nothing in his life to hide, he walked with his head erect,
and a mind content. In short, to put the facts into a word, Horace was
the Pylades of more than one Orestes--creditors being regarded as the
nearest modern equivalent to the Furies of the ancients.

He carried his poverty with the cheerfulness which is perhaps one of the
chief elements of courage, and, like all people who have nothing, he
made very few debts. As sober as a camel and active as a stag, he was
steadfast in his ideas and his conduct.

The happy phase of Bianchon's life began on the day when the famous
surgeon had proof of the qualities and the defects which, these no less
than those, make Doctor Horace Bianchon doubly dear to his friends. When
a leading clinical practitioner takes a young man to his bosom, that
young man has, as they say, his foot in the stirrup. Desplein did not
fail to take Bianchon as his assistant to wealthy houses, where some
complimentary fee almost always found its way into the student's pocket,
and where the mysteries of Paris life were insensibly revealed to the
young provincial; he kept him at his side when a consultation was to be
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