francs each--thirty-six thousand francs. Here, then, in round numbers
was an income of twenty thousand francs. Old patients, or friends whom
he would charge only ten francs for a visit, or see at home for
five, would perhaps make a slight reduction on this sum total, but
consultations with other physicians and various incidental fees would
make up for that.

Nothing could be easier than to achieve this by skilful advertising
remarks in the Figaro to the effect that the scientific faculty of Paris
had their eye on him, and were interested in the cures effected by the
modest young practitioner of Havre! And he would be richer than his
brother, richer and more famous; and satisfied with himself, for he
would owe his fortune solely to his own exertions; and liberal to his
old parents, who would be justly proud of his fame. He would not marry,
would not burden his life with a wife who would be in his way, but he
would choose his mistress from the most beautiful of his patients. He
felt so sure of success that he sprang out of bed as though to grasp it
on the spot, and he dressed to go and search through the town for rooms
to suit him.

Then, as he wandered about the streets, he reflected how slight are the
causes which determine our actions. Any time these three weeks he might
and ought to have come to this decision, which, beyond a doubt, the news
of his brother's inheritance had abruptly given rise to.

He stopped before every door where a placard proclaimed that "fine
apartments" or "handsome rooms" were to be let; announcements without an
adjective he turned from with scorn. Then he inspected them with a
lofty air, measuring the height of the rooms, sketching the plan in his
note-book, with the passages, the arrangement of the exits, explaining