How I was pampered! A great fire, warm wine, cigars; and while offering me these fine things and lighting a cigar for herself the comical creature said to me: "Make yourself at home; be quite at ease. This will bring back the hospital and the happy days of your youth.... Oh look! where did you win those white hairs? You were not like that, not so long ago, when you were interne at L----. I remember it was you that helped at the major operations. _There_ was a man that loved to cut, hew, lop off! It was you that handed him the instruments, the threads and the sponges.... And how proudly, the operation performed, he used to say, looking at his watch, 'Five minutes, gentlemen!' Oh! I, I go everywhere! I know these people well!" A few moments later, in more familiar tone, harping on the same theme, she said: "You are a doctor, aren't you, darling?" That unintelligible refrain brought me to my feet "No!" I cried, furious. "Surgeon, then?" "No! No! unless it be to cut off your head!" "Wait," she continued, "you shall see." And she drew from a closet a file of papers which was nothing else than the collection of illustrious doctors of the day, lithographed by Maurin, that was displayed for several years on the Quay Voltaire. "Look, do you recognize this one?" "Yes, it's X----. The name is at the bottom, besides; but I know him personally." "I should say so! Look! Here is Z----, the one who said in his course, speaking of X----, 'this monster, bearing on his face the blackness of his soul!' all because the other did not agree with him in a certain case! How they laughed at that in the school, at the time! Do you remember?... Look! here is K----, who denounced to the authorities the rebels he was caring for at his hospital. That was at the time of the riots. How is it possible so handsome a man can have so little heart? ... This one is W----, a famous Englishman; I captured him on his visit to Paris. He looks like a girl, doesn't he?" And as I touched a little tied-up parcel, also on the table: "Wait a while," she said, "In this one are the internes; and that package has the dressers." And she spread out, fanlike, a mass of photographs, picturing much younger faces. "When we see each other again, you will give me your portrait, won't you, deary?" "But," I said to her, I also following my fixed idea, "what makes you think I am a doctor?" "It's because you are so amiable and good to women!" "Peculiar logic," I said to myself. "Oh! I am hardly ever mistaken; I have known quite a number. I love them so much that, even though I am not sick, I sometimes go to see them, only to see them. There are some who say coldly: 'You are not sick at all!' But there are others who understand me, because I ogle them." "And when they do not understand?"