Solange, when she saw Philippe's situation, passed through one of those periodical crises of "patheticness" in which her whole horizon was filled by a single object. Whoever wished to profit by this had to lose no time. Philippe did not lose it. This drowning man grasped the hand that was held out to him. He even took the arm with it, and he would have taken the rest if he had not perceived that Solange, in her infatuation, had no thought of an amorous relation. She loved to feel exalted, but this in no way disturbed her tranquillity. Philippe had never seen a woman who was interested in him without being in pursuit of some interest of her own. The good Solange found her pleasure in herself. All she asked of others was that they should not gainsay the image she had formed of them. At heart she did not really want to know them. She took pains not to see anything in the other person that might displease her, saying to herself that this was not his "real nature"; and she accepted as real only what resembled herself. Thus she succeeded in creating in her own mind a whole universe composed of good, comfortable souls after her own pattern. Philippe let her go her own way with a little contempt and a little respect. He did not like stupid people; and he regarded as such those who did not see the world as it was; but a goodness that does the good of which it speaks was for him no everyday spectacle. Whatever their value might be, moral or immoral, the essential thing was that such people counted. Solange's goodness was not fictitious. Since she had become aware of Philippe's destitution and toil, she gave him a pension till he finished his years of study; she provided him with leisure so that he might work in peace. She did more: she made use of her extensive relations to interest one of the influential masters of the Faculty in him, or rather, since this cautious man had not failed to observe the restless power of the hungry young wolf, to so arrange things that his interest should not remain confined _intus et in cute_, but should show itself in the open. In the end she brought him into touch with an American oil-king who wanted to immortalize himself vicariously and opened for him a rapid path to fame. He laid the foundation of this across the ocean by his audacious feats of surgery in a palatial hospital founded by this Pharaoh.