His enemies had advised him to become a consultant--that is to say, to take rooms in an expensive street in the West End, and wait for other doctors to send him patients as to a superior. Vanbrugh took this advice, and for fifteen years no patient ever crossed his threshold. A consultant depends absolutely on the support of his own profession, and in his own profession Vanbrugh was hated as few men are hated. There were men who, if they had heard of a patient intending to consult him, would have walked across London to prevent it. Vanbrugh was a poor man. The whole of the funds remaining from his scholarships, together with the remittances doled out grudgingly by his family, were set aside to pay the rent of the rooms in Brook Street. His brass-plate, once affixed to the doorpost there, became his flag, which he would not strike while life remained. In the meantime he had to live. After endless trials in all directions, Bernard Vanbrugh succeeded in getting employment on the staff of one of those bureaus which undertake to supply information on any subject. Vanbrugh’s was the medical department, and he was paid at the rate of half a crown an hour. The work had mostly to be done at the British Museum, and his weekly earnings averaged about two pounds. This, then, was the situation. The most brilliant follower of medicine in Europe, perhaps the keenest intellect of his time, was compelled to spend the best years of his life among broken-down journalists, and stranded governesses, and all the sad jetsam of the educated class, doing drudge’s work for the wages of a drudge. The celebrated Huxley had a narrow escape from the same fate. How many other Huxleys and Vanbrughs are to-day dreeing the same weird, while the millions of philanthropy roll about the gutters, and the billions of endowments pass into the pockets of the dunce? Vanbrugh divided his scanty earnings into two equal portions. Fifty pounds a year paid for his food and clothes and the rare holidays conceded to health, with the other fifty he bought books and scientific instruments. The subject he had chosen to investigate was the cells of the brain. At the age of forty he completed his work on the brain, and the fifteen years’ penal servitude to which he had been sentenced by human stupidity and spite approached its term. He carried the manuscript to an important publisher, and solicited a personal interview. Strange to say, the publisher granted it. Vanbrugh’s name was well known to him. Some hints of his researches had leaked out from time to time, and the hospitals were already trembling. The meteoric career of the student had not been forgotten. Every now and then his brethren spoke of Vanbrugh as of a man from whom the world was certain to hear sooner or later. While he was toiling in the dust he was already reluctantly recognized as the coming man.