"But if Madame Dammauville saw clearly?"

"What must be learned before everything is, if she is in a state to see
clearly; I have said nothing else."

"A doctor would surely know on examining her?"

"Without doubt."

"If you were this doctor?"

It was a cry rather than an exclamation. She wished that he should
present himself before this woman; but in that case she would recognize
him.

Once more, under the pain of betraying his emotion, he must recover from
this first impulse.

"But how can you wish me to go and examine this woman whom I do not know,
and who does not know me? You know very well that patients choose their
doctors, and not doctors their patients."

"If she sent for you?"

"By what right?"

"By what I shall learn on making the concierge talk, could you not
recognize her kind of paralysis without seeing her?"