IV

Horace was an upright young fellow, incapable of tergiversation

on a matter of honor, going to the point without waste of words,

and as ready to pledge his cloak for a friend as to give him his

time and his night hours. Horace, in short, was one of those

friends who are never anxious as to what they may get in return

for what they give, feeling sure that they will in their turn get

more than they give. Most of his friends felt for him that

deeply-seated respect which is inspired by unostentatious virtue,

and many of them dreaded his censure. But Horace made no pedantic

display of his qualities. He was neither a puritan nor a

preacher; he could swear with a grace as he gave his advice, and

was always ready for a jollification when occasion offered. A

jolly companion, not more prudish than a trooper, as frank and

outspoken--not as a sailor, for nowadays sailors are wily

diplomates--but as an honest man who has nothing in his life to

hide, he walked with his head erect, and a mind content. In

short, to put the facts into a word, Horace was the Pylades of

more than one Orestes--creditors being regarded as the nearest

modern equivalent to the Furies of the ancients.

He carried his poverty with the cheerfulness which is perhaps one

of the chief elements of courage, and, like all people who have

nothing, he made very few debts. As sober as a camel and active

as a stag, he was steadfast in his ideas and his conduct.

The happy phase of Bianchon's life began on the day when the

famous surgeon had proof of the qualities and the defects which,

these no less than those, make Doctor Horace Bianchon doubly dear

to his friends. When a leading clinical practitioner takes a

young man to his bosom, that young man has, as they say, his foot

in the stirrup. Desplein did not fail to take Bianchon as his

assistant to wealthy houses, where some complimentary fee almost

always found its way into the student's pocket, and where the

mysteries of Paris life were insensibly revealed to the young

provincial; he kept him at his side when a consultation was to be

held, and gave him occupation; sometimes he would send him to a

watering-place with a rich patient; in fact, he was making a

practice for him. The consequence was that in the course of time

the Tyrant of surgery had a devoted ally. These two men--one at

the summit of honor and of his science, enjoying an immense

fortune and an immense reputation; the other a humble Omega,

having neither fortune nor fame--became intimate friends.

The great Desplein told his house surgeon everything; the

disciple knew whether such or such a woman had sat on a chair

near the master, or on the famous couch in Desplein's surgery, on

which he slept. Bianchon knew the mysteries of that temperament,

a compound of the lion and the bull, which at last expanded and

enlarged beyond measure the great man's torso, and caused his

death by degeneration of the heart. He studied the eccentricities

of that busy life, the schemes of that sordid avarice, the hopes

of the politician who lurked behind the man of science; he was

able to foresee the mortifications that awaited the only

sentiment that lay hid in a heart that was steeled, but not of

steel.