I must tell you the flaw, for there is one. Who is blameless? The
daughter of one of our leading actresses, after leaving the convent she
returned to live with her mother. It was there, in this environment-
ahem! ahem!--that an accident happened to her. To be brief, she has a
sweet little child that the father would have recognized assuredly, had
he not been already married. But at least he has provided for its future
by an endowment of two hundred thousand francs, in such a way that
whoever marries the mother and legitimizes the child will enjoy the
interest of this sum until the child's majority. If that ever arrives--
these little creatures are so fragile! You being a physician, you know
more about that than any one. In case of an accident the father will
inherit half the money from his son; and if it seems cruel for an own
father to inherit from his own son, it is quite a different thing when it
is a stranger who receives the fortune. This is all, my dear sir,
plainly and frankly, and I will not do you the injury to suppose that you
do not see the advantages of what I have said to you without need of my
insisting further. If I have not explained clearly,"

"But nothing is more clear."

"--it is the fault of this pain that paralyzes me."

And he groaned while holding his jaw.

"You have a troublesome tooth?" Saniel said, with the tone of a
physician who questions a patient.

"All my teeth trouble me. To tell the truth, they are all going to
pieces."