never found anybody to take him up in life. He was quite a lad
when he lost his widowed mother, and his health was, even then,
so bad and fitful that be could never work. He tried his best;
but what chef can afford to employ a youth who is always sending
in doctor's certificates to excuse his absence from his desk, and
breaking down with headache or swooning on the floor in office-hours?
He was totally unfit to earn his living, and the little money he
had would not suffice to keep him decently. Moreover, in his
delicate condition he positively needed comforts which to other
lads would have been superfluous. Still he managed to struggle
on for some five years, getting copying-work and what-not to do
in his own rooms, till he had contrived, by the time he was twenty-two,
to save a little money. His idea was to enter the medical profession
and earn a livelihood by writing for scientific journals, for he
had wits and was not without literary talent. He was lodging then
in a cheap quarter of Paris not far from the Ecole de Medecine.
Well, the poor boy passed his baccalaureat and entered on his first
year. He got through that pretty well, but then came the hospital
work; and then, once more he broke down. The rising at six o'clock
on bitter cold winter mornings, the going out into the bleak early
air sometimes thick with snow or sleet, the long attendance day
after day in unwholesome wards and foetid post-mortem rooms; the
afternoons spent over dissecting,--all these things contributed
to bring about a catastrophe. He fell sick and took to his bed,
and as he was quite alone in the world, his tutor, who was a kind-
hearted man, undertook to see him through his illness, both as
physician and as friend. And when, after a few weeks, Georges was
able to get about again, the professor, seeing how lonely the young
man was, asked him to spend his Sundays and spare evenings with
himself and his family in their little apartment au ca'nquieme of