Jenkins examined his patient without speaking, ausculted him, percussed him, then, in the same rough tone, which might possibly be ascribed to anxious affection, to the irritation of the physician who finds that his instructions have been disregarded, he said: "In God's name, my dear Duke, what sort of a life have you been leading lately?" He knew from ante-room gossips--the doctor did not despise them in the households of those of his patients with whom he was on intimate terms--he knew that the duke had a _new one_, that this caprice of recent date had taken possession of him, excited him to an unusual degree, and that information, added to other observations made in other directions, had sown in Jenkins' mind a suspicion, a mad desire to know the name of this _new one_. That is what he was trying to read on his patient's pale brow, seeking the subject of his thoughts rather than the cause of his illness. But he had to do with one of those faces peculiar to men who are successful with women, faces as hermetically sealed as the caskets with secret compartments which contain women's jewels and letters,--one of those reticent natures locked with a cold, limpid glance, a glance of steel against which the most perspicacious cunning is powerless. "You are mistaken, Doctor," replied His Excellency calmly, "I have not changed my habits in any respect." "Very good! you have done wrong, Monsieur le Duc," said the Irishman bluntly, furious at his inability to discover anything. But the next moment, realizing that he had gone too far, he tempered his ill-humor and the brutality of his diagnosis with a bolus of trite, axiomatic observations.--He must be careful. Medicine was not magic. The power of the Jenkins Pearls was limited by human strength, the necessities of advancing age, the resources of nature, which, unhappily, are not inexhaustible. The duke interrupted him nervously: "Come, come, Jenkins, you know that I don't like fine phrases. They don't go with me. What is the matter with me? What is the cause of this coldness?" "It's anaemia, exhaustion--a lowering of the oil in the lamp." "What must I do?" "Nothing. Absolute rest. Eat and sleep, nothing more. If you could go and pass a few weeks at Grandbois--" Mora shrugged his shoulders. "What about the Chamber, and the Council, and--Nonsense! as if it were possible!" "At all events, Monsieur le Duc, you must put on the drag, as someone said, you must absolutely give up--"