"You can imagine what then take place. Doctor Barsac cry in a loud voice that his honor is satisfied, and the next moment he is on his knees beside his friend. Monsieur Mariguy is at once put in the bed, and for one--two--three months he is dead one day and breathe a little the next. Barsac never leave the house of his friend Monsieur Rochefort one moment--not one day does he go back to Basle. Every night he is by the bed of Monsieur Mariguy. Then comes the critical moment. Monsieur Mariguy must have a new stomach; the old one is like a stocking with a hole in the toe. Then comes the great triumph of Monsieur le Docteur. All Paris come out to see. To make a stomach of silver is to make one the fool, they say. The old doctors shake their heads, but Barsac he only laugh. In one more month Monsieur Mariguy is on his feet, and every day walks a little in the Bois near the house of Monsieur Rochefort. In one more month he run, and eat himself full like a boy. "He is now no longer the great advocate. He is the _example_ of Monsieur Barsac. That is why he is here at the medical convention. They arrived only yesterday and leave to-night. If you turn a little, my Lord, you can see into the other room. There they sit smoking.--Ah! do you hear? That is Monsieur Mariguy's laugh. Oh, they enjoy themselves! They have drank two bottles of Johannisberger already--twenty-five francs each, if you please, my Lord. The head waiter showed me the bottles. But what does Barsac care? He cut everything out of the insides of the Prince Morin one day last month, and had for a fee fifty thousand francs and the order of St. John." I bent my head in the direction of Joseph's index finger and easily recognized the two men at the table. The smaller man, Barsac, was even more trim and alert-looking than when I caught a glimpse of him in the bedroom. As he sat and talked to Mariguy he looked more like an officer in the French army than a doctor. His hair was short, his mustache pointed, and his beard closely trimmed. He had two square shoulders and a slim waist, and talked with his hands as if they were part of his mental equipment. The other man, Mariguy, the "example," was just a fat, jolly, good-natured Frenchman, who to all appearance loved a bottle of wine better than he did a brief. Joseph was about to begin again when I stopped him with this inquiry: "There is one thing in your story, Joseph, that I don't quite get: you say they were students together?" "Yes, my Lord." "That the first duel--the one that the mother stopped--was fifteen years ago?" "Quite true, my Lord." "And that this last duel was fought a year ago, and that all that time they were together whenever they could be, and devoted friends?" "Every word true, my Lord." "Well, then, why didn't they fight before?" Joseph looked at me with a curious expression on his face--one rather of disappointment, as if I had utterly failed to grasp his meaning.