Gaillard’s fairy people visited her, and Bastiche and Fantoff commanded her terrified attention as they did battle once more on the greensward in front of the Castle of Flowers, whilst Fantoum watched them across the holly hedge. Then the battle scene vanished, and Mizar the cat came and took his seat upon her chest. His eyes were pale blue, and flickered like spirit lamps in a draught; she implored of him to give her water to drink, and for answer he changed into Gaillard. Through all these fancies ran the form of an old man. It was De Nani, whom she had seen once for a moment as he talked to Toto at the Gare du Nord: his lascivious and painted face peeped at her here and there from behind hedges and trees in this phantom land, whilst over all flew Algebar, the paradisiacal bird, rending the attenuated air with the constant mournful cry, “Beware! beware! A carrot is trying to enter the Castle of Flowers.” With daylight all these strange fancies vanished, and at seven o’clock, when Toto entered her room to inquire how she felt, she answered that she was quite well, but had been dreaming terrible things. She implored him in her husky whisper to bring in Dodor, and having placed the cage close to the bed and removed the green cover, he made some coffee and brought her some with half a buttered roll. She drank the coffee, and when he was gone she hid the buttered roll so that he might think she had eaten it. At all hazards she must keep up the appearance of not being “very bad,” for if Toto were alarmed he would, without doubt, send for a doctor, and that meant spending money. Fully five hundred times had Mme. Liard recounted to her the frightful expense M. Liard had put her to in his last illness; she always spoke of the doctor’s bill with hands outstretched a yard wide. “Pills—a little box not bigger than a thimble, three francs—three francs, as I am an honest woman! and plasters a yard wide that did nothing, as far as I could see, but put the good man in pain; and not only plasters, but bottles of stuff, sometimes twice a day, red and brown and yellow, and always changing till one grew giddy; and then when he had killed him wanted to cut him open to see what he died of. May I never reach heaven if I tell a lie! That is what doctors are!” No wonder Célestin dreaded the craft, and much preferred Choiseul’s lozenges and Garnier’s sugar candy to the ruinous bottles and the pills at three francs a thimbleful, and the chance of being cut open “to see what she died of.” Cough lozenges and sugar candy are not perhaps the most effective remedies for acute pneumonia, especially when the patient has only one lung; but perhaps, taking that fact into consideration, they were as serviceable as any others.