While the carriage waited by the terrace of the _restaurant_ and the waiters unobtrusively bestowed on it knowing glances, down a steep little path came rolling a short, fat man, with the white spats, white tie, silk hat, and captivating air of the doctor of a fashionable watering-place. He made signals from the distance with his sunshade, there’s Gomes,’ said Paul. Doctor Gomes, formerly on the resident staff of one of the Paris hospitals, had been ruined by play and an old attachment. Now he was ‘Uncle Gomes,’ and had an irregular practice; not a bad fellow, but one who would stick at nothing, and had made a specialty of affairs like the present. Fee, two guineas and breakfast. Just now he was spending his holiday with Cloclo at Ville d’Avray, and came puffing to the meeting place, carrying a little bag which held his instrument case, medicines, bandages, splints--enough to set up an ambulance. ‘Is it to be scratch or wound?’ he asked, as he took his seat in the carriage opposite Paul. ‘Scratch, of course, doctor, scratch, with swords of the Institute. The Académie Française against the Sciences Morales et Politiques.’ Gomès smiled as he steadied his bag between his knees. ‘I did not know, so I brought the big apparatus.’ ‘Well, you must display it; it will impress the enemy,’ suggested Védrine, in his quiet way. The doctor winked, a little put out by the two seconds, whose faces were unknown to the boulevards, and to whom Paul Astier, who treated him like a servant, did not even introduce him. As the carriage started, the window of a room on the first floor opened, and a pair came and looked at them curiously. The girl was Marie Donval, of the Gymnase, whom the doctor recognised and named in a loud voice. The other was a deformed little creature, whose head was barely visible above the window-sill. Freydet, with much indignation, and Védrine, with some amusement, recognised Fage.