“Ay, treason, always treason!” returned Von Gaden, bitterly. “If I cure the czar, I am a magician; if I fail to cure him, I am a poisoner. It is, therefore, only a choice of evils.” He stooped down and stirred the fire, the red light glowing on his features. I had put aside my cloak and was standing watching him. He laid down the poker and looked up. “Be seated,” he said, courteously, signing to me to take the only chair in the room, while he sat down opposite, on a crooked-legged stool. “I dare say you think I have forgotten Ramodanofsky, but I have not. It is an evil story, and I have never told it; but it is borne in upon me that I may not have long to live, and I do not care to die with that secret in my bosom,--although I have many others,” he added, smiling. He was leaning a little forward, his clasped hands resting heavily on his knees, his back being to the light, and only the red glow of the fire illumining his features. “Your profession makes you a natural repository of secrets,” I replied. “My own nature is too careless for such a work as yours; I should bungle both with my patients and their confidences.” “It might be far otherwise if you had been trained to tend the ill and the dying, M. de Brousson,” he rejoined quietly. “Every profession molds its neophytes. You have been taught to put people out of the world, I to help to keep them in it.” “The nobler work,” I said courteously, although I had no thought of drawing a comparison between my sword and his lance.