recalling him suddenly to the sense of his ludicrous situation, the
marquis offered one finger to his friend's demonstrative shake of the
hand, and passed back with dignity behind his curtain, while the other
left, in haste to resume his round.

What a magnificent clientele he had, this Jenkins! Nothing but princely
mansions, heated staircases, laden with flowers at every landing,
upholstered and silky alcoves, where disease was transformed into
something discreet, elegant, where nothing suggested that brutal hand
which throws on a bed of pain those who only cease to work in order to
die. They were not in any true speech, sick people, these clients of
the Irish doctor. They would have been refused admission to a hospital.
Their organs not possessing even strength to give them a shock, the seat
of their malady was to be discovered nowhere, and the doctor, as he bent
over them, might have sought in vain the throb of any suffering in those
bodies which the inertia, the silence of death already inhabited. They
were worn-out, debilitated people, anaemics, exhausted by an absurd
life, but who found it so good still that they fought to have it
prolonged. And the Jenkins pills became famous precisely by reason of
that lash of the whip which they gave to jaded existences.

"Doctor, I beseech you, let me be fit to go to the ball this evening!"
the young woman would say, prostrate on her lounge, and whose voice was
reduced to a breath.

"You shall go, my dear child."

And she went; and never had she looked more beautiful.

"Doctor, at all costs, though it should kill me, to-morrow morning I