you now need. Go into the country, confine yourself to a regular and
healthy diet: vegetables, white meat, milk in the morning, a very little
wine, but, above all things, no coffee. Take moderate exercise, hunt--
and avoid all irritating thoughts; read the 'Musee des familles' or the
'Magasin Pittoresque'. This regime will have the effect of a soothing
poultice upon your brain, and before the end of six months you will be in
your normal condition again.'

"'Six months!' I exclaimed. 'You wretch of a doctor, tell me, then, to
let my beard and nails grow like Nebuchadnezzar. Six months! You do not
know how I detest the country, partridges, rabbits and all. For heaven's
sake, find some other remedy for me.'

"'There is homoeopathy,' said he, smiling. 'Hahnemann is quite the
fashion now.'

"'Let us have homoeopathy!'

"'You know the principles of the system: 'Similia similibus!' If you have
fever, redouble it; if you have smallpox, be inoculated with a triple
dose. So far as you are concerned, you are a little used up and 'blase',
as we all are in this Babylon of ours; have recourse, then, as a remedy,
to the very excesses which have brought you into this state.
Homoeopathize yourself morally. It may cure you, it may kill you; I wash
my hands of it.'

"The doctor was joking, I said to myself after he had left. Does he
think that passions are like the Wandering Jew's five sous, that there
is nothing to do but to put your hand in your pocket and take them out
at your convenience when necessary. However, this idea, strange as it