The road was completed as far as the stony valley of Mana, and here the
professor's daily walk ended. To look at him nobody would have suspected
that he had to care for his health; but his growing stoutness gave him
no little anxiety, and led him to take this exercise. Perhaps his short
stature made him look stouter than he really was; yet it could not be
denied that his neck emerged with difficulty from the folds of his neck-
cloth, or that his close-shaven, brick-red cheeks stood out rather too
conspicuously on each side of his thick moustache. The professor had
passed his fortieth year. True, he still preserved his elasticity, and
his short legs carried their burden easily; but it was noticed that when
he had a companion on his walks, he always contrived to have his
interlocutor do the talking going up hill, and took his own turn coming
down or on the level ground.

If he had thus far failed to lessen his rotundity, he had at least
stopped its growth,--a fact of which he made sure once a month by
weighing himself on the scales of the Custom House, where a friend of
his held the post of weigher. His physician had also recommended sea-
bathing. Most of his friends--both doctors and laymen--protested against
this advice; but the professor was immovable when once he had made up
his mind or bestowed his confidence; he stood firm against the
remonstrance and banter of those who regarded sea-bathing as a tonic,
and consequently fattening. He continued his baths for two seasons, and
would have kept on for the rest of his life, if a dreadful accident had
not given him such a fear of the sea, that he would have risked doubling
his circumference rather than expose himself again to the danger from
which he had been saved only through the strength and courage of Mr.
Liakos, a judge of the civil court. But for him, Mr. Plateas would have
been drowned, and this history unwritten.