patient, the good patient whom he had expected for four years. He left
his desk to open the door.

It was his coal man, who came with his bill.

"I will stop some day when I am near you," Saniel said. "I am in a hurry
this evening."

"And I am in a hurry, too; I must pay a large bill tomorrow, and I count
upon having some money from you."

"I have no money here."

After a long talk he got rid of the man and returned to his desk. He had
answered but a few of the many letters when his bell rang again. This
time he would not open the door; it was a creditor, without doubt. And
he continued his correspondence.

But for four years he had waited for chance to draw him a good ticket in
the lottery of life--a rich patient afflicted with a cyst or a tumor that
he would take to a fashionable surgeon, who would divide with him the ten
or fifteen thousand francs that he would receive for the operation. In
that case he would be saved.

He ran to the door. The patient with the cyst presented himself in the
form of a small bearded man with a red face, wearing over his vest the
wine-merchant's apron of coarse black cloth. In fact, it was the wine
merchant from the corner, who, having heard of the officer's visit, came
to ask for the payment of his bill for furnishing wine for three months.