curt, dry laugh, awakened, at a first meeting, a serious antipathy which
he sometimes justified by venomous words, by meaningless silences, by
unspoken innuendoes. He was respected and feared at Chantelouve's, but
when one came to know him one found, beneath his defensive shell, great
warmth of heart and a capacity for true friendship of the kind that is
not expansive but is capable of sacrifice and can always be relied upon.

How did he live? Was he rich or just comfortable? No one knew, and he,
tight lipped, never spoke of his affairs. He was doctor of the Faculty
of Paris--Durtal had chanced to see his diploma--but he spoke of
medicine with great disdain. He said he had become convinced of the
futility of all he had been taught, and had thrown it over for
homeopathy, which in turn he had thrown over for a Bolognese system, and
this last he was now excoriating.

There were times when Durtal could not doubt that his friend was an
author, for Des Hermies spoke understandingly of tricks of the trade
which one learns only after long experience, and his literary judgment
was not that of a layman. When, one day, Durtal reproached him for
concealing his productions, he replied with a certain melancholy, "No, I
caught myself in time to choke down a base instinct, the desire of
resaying what has been said. I could have plagiarized Flaubert as well
as, if not better than, the poll parrots who are doing it, but I decided
not to. I would rather phrase abstruse medicaments of rare application;
perhaps it is not very necessary, but at least it isn't cheap."

What surprised Durtal was his friend's prodigious erudition. Des Hermies
had the run of the most out-of-the-way book shops, he was an authority
on antique customs and, at the same time, on the latest scientific
discoveries. He hobnobbed with all the freaks in Paris, and from them he