Dr Pilori was a physician in high practice, and of a class not uncommon in Paris,--at once a man of pleasure and a votary of science. With a fair share of talent and an inordinate one of self-conceit, he had pushed himself forward in his profession, applying himself, in conformity with the Parisian rage for rage for _spécialités_, particularly to one class of complaint. The lungs were the organ he had taken under his special protection: his word was law in all cases of pulmonary disease. He was physician to an hospital, member of the Legion of Honour, and of innumerable learned societies; his portrait graced the shop-windows of medical booksellers, whilst his works, on maladies of the lungs, occupied a prominent place on their shelves. His patients were numerous and his fees large. So far the man of science. The man of pleasure occupied a gorgeous apartment in the vicinity of the Madeleine; gave smart and frequent soirées, (as one means of increasing his connexion,) where singers of the first water gave their notes in payment of his advice. He was frequently at the opera,--occasionally at the Café de Paris,--lived on bad terms with his wife, and on good ones with a ballet-dancer, and was in request as an attendant at duels amongst the young dandies of the clubs, with most of whom he was on a footing of familiarity amounting almost to intimacy. "How am I wrong, doctor?" repeated de Mellay. "In your prediction of Fatello's longevity. Of course it is of him you speak?" "Of no other. What ails him?" "He is dying of consumption," gravely replied Pilori. The viscount laughed incredulously, and even Steinfeld could not restrain a smile, so little appearance was there of a consumptive habit in the robust frame, and coarse, rough physiognomy of the financier. "Laugh if you please, young gentlemen," said the doctor. "It is no laughing matter for Monsieur Fatello, I can tell you. His life is not worth a year's purchase." "You have been prescribing for him then, doctor," said Arthur maliciously. "I have," said the physician, suffering the hit to pass unnoticed. "No longer ago than yesterday he consulted me for a trifling indisposition, and, in studying his idiosyncrasy, I detected the graver disease. What do you think he called me in for? I ought not to tell these things, but the joke is too good to keep. He was annoyed about the blotches on his face--anxious for a clear complexion. In what strange places vanity finds a corner! Poor fellow! he little thinks how soon the worms will be at work upon his cuticle." "You did not tell him, then?" said de Mellay, still doubtful of the doctor's sincerity, and with a sort of shudder at his dissecting-room style.