The French windows opened upon the garden of the old house, the ground-floor of which was occupied by Dr. Louvet. The latter belonged to that generation of society scientists who visit the hospital in the morning, receive their clients in the afternoon, and find means to be as witty as idlers in a drawing-room at ten o'clock in the evening. Further, they are intelligent enough to prepare for the prolonged waitings of their fair patients an adornment wherein the latter may find something of what they have left at home, and an aspect of things similar to that to which they have been accustomed. Alfred involuntarily felt uncomfortable in this vast room which, with its tapestries and wainscotings and pictures, appeared to be intended rather for lordly receptions than for the use of suffering humanity. He experienced a feeling of relief on entering the doctor's room, in which there was nothing but books--a contrast skilfully contrived by Louvet, who was as able in stage management as he was excellent in diagnosis. He was a man still young and very fair, with a face that suggested somewhat the traditional type of the Valois, and dark eyes of singular penetration. He was slight and pale, and when he placed his finger against his temple--a familiar gesture of his which was reproduced in a fine portrait, by Nittis, that hung in the room--he presented a strange blending of extreme delicacy and studied posture, which women especially found imposing. "How is Madame Chazel?" he asked in the polished and detached tone which he always affected. "Well, doctor," said Alfred, "it is precisely about her health that I have come to consult you." "And why has she not come herself?" asked the physician. "She does not even know of the step I have taken," replied the husband. "She causes me much anxiety. You know how she is wasting away; you have seen her several times lately." Doctor Louvet listened in the attitude of his portrait, with his eyelids half closed. Although he was completely master of himself, as became a man accustomed daily to receive the confidences of many persons deprived of hypocrisy by the presence of danger, he was unable, on hearing these words of Chazel's, to restrain a movement of his eyelids. Rapid as was this movement and the glance which accompanied it, it could not escape poor Alfred, whose whole powers of attention were at that moment concentrated upon the doctor's face. Why did that glance cause him a little shiver, and tempt him to ask: "When have you seen my wife?" But it was a question impossible to put. Moreover, the physician was already making his reply. "When Madame Chazel did me the honour to consult me last"--and this word expressed both everything and nothing--"she appeared to me to be suffering more particularly in the nervous system."