Thibaut knew everything of which I was ignorant, so he undertook my education, and it was no light task. We spent nearly all our evenings together in a tiny room in the rue du Pélican, which looked out on the passage Véro-Dodat. I was a hundred yards off the Palais-Royal, so it was the easiest thing imaginable to go from my quarters to make up my packet for the courier. In the morning, I often accompanied Thibaut to the Hôpital de la Charité, where I picked up a little knowledge of physiology and anatomy, although I have never been able to overcome my aversion towards operations and dead bodies. From these visits accrued a certain amount of medical and surgical knowledge, which has often come in very usefully in my novel-writing. As, for example, in _Amaury_, where I traced the various phases of a lung disease in my heroine, Madeleine, with such accuracy that once I was paid the compliment of a visit from M. Noailles, who came to ask me to stop the run of this novel in the _Presse._ His daughter and his son-in-law, who were both in the same stage of consumption, had recognised their precise symptoms in Madeleine's illness, and both waited impatiently each morning for the paper, to know whether M. d'Avrigny's daughter was going to die or not. As M. d'Avrigny's daughter had been condemned to death both by fate and by her author, the _feuilleton_ was interrupted and, to comfort the two poor invalids, I improvised, in manuscript, a conclusion which raised their hopes, but which, alas! did not restore them to health. The _feuilleton_ was not resumed until after their death. The readers of the _Presse_ had noticed the interruption, but were ignorant of its cause. Now they know. I have said that I went with Thibaut to the Hôpital de la Charité most mornings, from six to seven o'clock. In the evening, we studied physics and chemistry in his room; and it was in his room that I made my first study of the poisons used by Madame de Villefort in _Monte-Cristo_--a study which I followed and perfected later, with Ruolz. A good-looking young neighbour named Mademoiselle Walker, who was a milliner, used to join us in our researches. Like la Fontaine's hen, she failed to set Thibaut and me at variance, although she tried all sorts of devices, but happily none was successful, and we all three managed to keep on friendly terms. I owe much to Thibaut for teaching me method in working, as well as for actual knowledge. I will relate later how Thibaut, whose name is several times quoted in _l'Histoire de dix ans_, by Louis Blanc, was obliged, by reason of his relationship with the family of Maréchal Gérard, to play a certain part in the Revolution of July.