who were accustomed to meet each other. At half-past four o'clock, in
the deepening twilight, men with grave looks and dark clothes--members of
the Academy of Medicine--the Tuesday sitting over, issued from the porch,
and entered their carriages. Some of them walked alone, briskly, in a
great hurry; others demonstrated a skilful tardiness, stopping to talk
politely to a journalist, and to give him notes of the day's meeting,
or continuing, with a 'confrere' who was not an Academician, the
conversation begun in the room of the 'pas-perdus'; it was the Bourse of
consultations that was just closed. Not all the members of the Academy
have, in truth, a long list of patients to visit; but each one has a vote
to give, and they are those whom the candidates surround, trying to win
them.

One of the Academicians who appeared the last at the top of the steps was
a man of great height but bent figure, with hollow cheeks and pale face
lighted by pale blue eyes with a strange expression, both hard and
desolate at the same time. He advanced alone, and his heavy gait and
dragging step gave him the appearance of a man sixty years of age, while
in other ways he retained a certain youthfulness. It was Saniel, twenty
years older.

Without exchanging a bow or a hand-shake with any one, he descended to
the pavement and walked to the boulevard, where he opened the door of a
coups whose interior showed a complete ambulant library--a writing table
with paper, ink, and lamp, pockets full of books and pamphlets.

Just as he was about to enter, a voice stopped him.

He turned; it was one of his old pupils, who had recently become a
physician in the suburb of Gentilly.