When we returned home, somewhat cheered up by the change, we met Mariette at the door, full of indignant wrath. She had served us for more than twenty years, and never thought of controlling herself in our presence. The little doctor who had long ago visited me in my attack of pleurisy had attempted to slip a gold piece into her hand, begging her to give his name and address to the patients who continued to crowd to our house, and with an emphatic gesture she had thrown his gold at his head. “The wretched creature!” exclaimed Aunt Deen, who had witnessed the incident from the staircase. “Ah! _they_ are all just alike!” And I ceased to deny the existence of those who surrounded us, “they,” and knew that calamity was impending over us. A little later in the evening, just before the dinner hour, as the bell rang I went myself to the door, thinking that it might be my brother Stephen, arriving from Rome, whence he had been recalled the previous evening. I saw before me in the shadow, for the vestibule lamp but feebly lighted the doorstep, one of our poor people, old Yes-Yes, with his ever-nodding head. I knew that he was still alive, though Zeeze Million had carried her dreams of fortune with her to the grave. Why did he come on another day than Saturday, the regular day of the poor? “Wait,” I said. “I’ll go for some money.” But he caught my arm almost familiarly. “Yes, yes,” he began, “that’s not it.” “What then?” “Yes, yes, he cured me, you understand. So it’s to learn, yes, to learn how he is.” Full of gratitude he had come for information. I spoke more gently, as I replied: “Always the same, friend.” “Ah, ah! yes, yes, so much the worse.” I wondered why he did not go. Did he after all, hope for a little money? Suddenly, like a stammerer who has succeeded in getting hold of his words, and makes the most of it, he thrust his face close to mine, exclaiming: “He--he--he was a man! Yes, yes.” And he at once disappeared in the darkness. I gazed into the shadows which had swallowed him up, and then suddenly closed the door;--but too late, for it seemed to me that some one had come in, an invisible some one who took his way up the stairs, through the passage, to the room. I tried to cry out, but my lips uttered no sound; and I thought to myself that if I had cried out they would have thought me crazy. I stood there paralysed, knowing that some one had come into the house before me, and that I could not drive out him who was there, before me, who would not go out, who was noiselessly going up the stairs, his actual presence unsuspected by all but me.