This unwelcome intruder, when Guido | should get well. You look too young to entered the room, was just coming to from be rich, so you don't know what it means a fit of feeble yet exhausting coughing, to have a lot of poor relations, a lot of which made the lover's appearance all the wretches, waiting for your shoes. It's more distressingly unseasonable. The important I should live to disappoint 'em, glow came into Irene's cheeks and the every one. I want to marry and have a fight into her eyes when she saw who had family of my own. I don't want to feel, come again; but that coughing wretch when I'm coming here to look at Signor kept the lovers farther apart than the Vanucci's mosaics, that every step would whole breadth of Italy, which had been be the death of me. Look here! I tell between them till to-day. you what I tell every doctor I see: I'll give twenty-five thousand francs to the man who will rid me of this cold. I expect there isn't a doctor in Europe, Africa, Australia, or America who isn't after that money. They say it's consumption, and that's where they go wrong. I'll tell you my symptoms. In the first place"

"Hold up, signor," said Vanucci, roughly but cheerfully. "Love, smoke, and a cough are hard to hide. Irene, give Signor Merrick a dose of wine, and me another; it's empty casks that make a noise. What! Guido Floriani - back again? Take a dose yourself. And to whose health shall I drink? To Captain Floriani? or to Floriani, primo tenore of San Carlo? or to the great poet Floriani? It'll be something great, to be sure," he said, with what seemed rather an overdone affectation of blunt raillery than the real thing.

"I have come back a doctor," said Guido, with modest pride, glancing at Irene, and suddenly aware that her quickened color was caused not by his swift glance but by the stranger's unbridled

stare.

But at the word "doctor" the latter turned to Guido.

"Signor," said Guido, with increased disgust, and taking advantage of the other's sudden exhaustion, “I fear there is a misunderstanding. I am not a doctor of medicine. I am an advocate-a doctor of laws."

"Oh that all!" said the Englishman, as if Guido were no longer worth notice, and settling down into another stare at Irene.

Vanucci began to fidget a little; for all his geniality, he was evidently anxious and ill at ease. "An advocate, eh! ahlawyers' houses are built of fools' skulls. Faith, you'll find building materials for a whole street of such houses in Bari. By the way, Signor Merrick, will you grant me ten thousand pardons - -or even one will do if I leave you? I've got to see somebody about something, and

"I shall be delighted; that is to say, don't mind me," said Signor Merrick. Though I haven't got to work for my living, I can make every allowance for you poor fellows that have to I can indeed. The signorina will do to show me those mosaics just as well."

"A doctor! Ah! And a young doctor! Then maybe you have heard something new," he said, in the ghost of a voice which nobody could interpret without the fear of breaking it to pieces altogether. "I am an Englishman; my name is Merrick Albert Merrick. I am a rich man. I have seven thousand pounds," a hundred and seventy thousand francs, a year. I'm rich, talented, amiable, not ill-looking, and yet I'm a miserable man. And why? All because of an obstinate cold. Yes, you may well look at me. Though I say it that shouldn't, I don't believe there ever was a case like mine. I've baffled your whole faculty for years. I've consulted every doctor, famous or not famous, in London, Paris, Vienna, New York - everywhere. And they're humbugs, one and all. Consumption, indeed! I've tried Algiers, Madeira, South Africa, Davos - places that cure consumption. So mine can't be consumption, or else it would have been cured long and long ago. I've been advised to try the air of the Adriatic, and upon my soul I believe I am better," he gasped, with a sort of leer at Irene. "Better - but you see I want to get well. It's really important that I

"Then come along, doctor," said Vanucci. "Come along. You're going my way, and—yes, yes; Irene knows all about everything. You've come just in the nick of time, Doctor Floriani, to advise me about a point of law. We can talk it over as we go. And cheer up, signor! 'Tis of the sickness a man fears that he dies."

There was no help for it. Guido rather plumed himself upon being a man of resource; and indeed it is wonderful how full of resource we all are, except just at the moment when it is wanted. Unluckily nothing occurred to him just then beyond taking the stranger by the coat-collar and dropping him from the open window into

Sir," said he, "I do not yet possess a hundred and seventy thousand lire a year, which, indeed, is a great deal too much for anybody. But I have an honorable pro-princess-even- who knows?" fession, which may lead a man anywhere. I have a fair measure of talent; I have not the worst of characters; I have youth, strength, ambition; and I love Irene more deeply and faithfully than ever was woman loved before. I want nothing with her but herself, and that she, God bless her, is willing to give me; and so

be won by faith and constancy, that the love of a life could outweigh a solid lump of lire every year!

However, the rough salutation brought him back to the life that had to be lived with or without Irene; and he found himself alone in the trattoria but for one man apparently a few years his senior, with whose face, though he could not recall it, he did not feel wholly unfamiliar. It was not, however, a face that was easily forgotten-not handsome, by any means, but, while grave and thoughtful, amazingly keen, with brilliant black eyes which seemed to be everywhere at once, in an anything but comfortable manner for any dusty corner or for anybody who had anything to hide. And there was this peculiarity about the whole face, that these same eyes, though so full of light and movement, had not the sign of a smile in them, even though the lips and the voice expressed easy good nature; their touch of wildness, in conjunction with otherwise homely and commonplace features, gave them the odd effect of belonging to some other man.

"What?" he went on, with a light laugh at Guido's evident want of recognition. "Don't you remember Saverio Calò?"

"Capperi !" exclaimed Guido. “ Why, to think that you should remember me after all these years! But I thought you'd left Bari for good

"For everybody's good, I hope. And how have things been going on without me? Not very well, I should say, if you are a specimen. You look as if there'd been a dozen indigestions in that ragout." "I have not been in Bari three hours, after being away three years," said Guido bitterly in anything but the tone in which one greets an old friend.

himself on the Adriatic. Perhaps Naples, perhaps Florence, perhaps Rome. I'm ambitious I must have a large field. I have ideas; I must try them on all sorts and kinds of men. I may even go back to Paris - not much chance, perhaps, where good physicians are as common as blackberries; but think of the cases one sees and studies the number, the variety! If I had but ten thousand francs I'd go back to Paris, and never leave the dissecting-room. That's the beauty of science, my dear Floriani. When you fairly know her, you'll marry her without a dowry; and you'll never tire of her, because the more you know of her, the more there's left to know."

Thus he rattled on, without giving Guido a chance of speaking, in a light, quick voice and easy manner; while, and especially when he paused at last, his eyes took a glow, as if it was the nonchalance that was skin-deep, and possibly affected, while the enthusiasm, even though expressed half in mockery, was real.

"Then there is another coincidence," said Guido, forcing himself to make some sort of response to his old comrade. "We are doctor and doctor - you of medicine, and I of law."

"Excellent! And have you yet had your first client?"

"No."

"Nor I my first patient! Now this is getting really interesting. We were evidently made for one another. Let's make a bargain. We'll climb on one another's shoulders. I'll physic you for your first illness, and you shall defend me in my first action-at-law. And we will dose and defend each other so well, that there will be no lawyer in the Two Sicilies but Dr. Floriana, and no physician but Dr. Cald. I've a great mind to begin your treatment for indigestion, or love, or whatever's the matter with you, from this very hour."

"Have you ever studied consumption?" asked Guido, rather grimly, for he was in no humor for badinage, and all the less for feeling as if those uncomfortable eyes of Dr. Cald were reading him through and through.

"If that isn't a coincidence!" why, I've been away six years and back six hours! And what have you been doing all this while? Yes, I've been faithful to my first love, who'll be my last - science! Here's her health, in what's left in your bottle. I fell in love with her, if you re member, that day when, not as high as this table, we saw that Dulcamara fellow at the fair. Do you remember how I used "Studied consumption - phthisis! I? to operate upon every creature that came-have I not indeed!" exclaimed the in my way, even down to an amputation young physician, his whole face lighting of the hind leg of my grandfather's favor-up with excitement. "Why, phthisis is ite armchair? Well, I've gone through my passion; it is a mystery-the most the whole thing since then; I've walked fascinating of mysteries. It is the purthe hospitals in Paris, and am now full- pose of my life to discover its cause, its blown into doctor of medicine. No; I course, its cure. Why do you ask don't think of practising in Bari. A physician with a French degree mustn't waste

"Because, if you want a patient, I've got a better than myself for you, a pa

tient who is offering twenty-five thousand lire to anybody who will save him from death's door

"A case of phthisis? And twenty-five thousand lire? I'm your man. If he is curable, consider him cured. Where can I see your friend? when?

"He is not my friend,” said Guido. "I want him cured for a better reason than his being my friend."

upon the breathing-apparatus of man and other animals, until they exercised upon him the born specialist's fascination. He had not really exaggerated one whit when he described to Guido his idea of the earthly paradise as living in a great hospital for consumption, where he might carry on endless researches into phthisis in all its forms, with stethoscope, microscope, and dissecting-knife, and with occasional experiments of that darker kind which modern science, like ancient magic, prefers to conceal from the light of day. And as he proceeded in his investigation of dead and living nature, more and more convinced he grew that so-called consump

"And what is that?" "Because he is my enemy. Because I want him to be well and strong enough for me to cross swords with him that is why. Because I don't want the disgrace of having for a rival a lot of bones held together by a scrap of skin. Because-tion is due to a single cause, whether germ in short because

86

Ah," said Saverio, "I knew as soon as I set my eyes on you that you were in some sort of a fever; and that it must be either dyspepsia or love, I was as certain as that there's no dish worth a fit of the first and no woman worth a touch of the second. I'll pull you round-never fear. But that other case! Embrace me, my dear Guido! This is more than coincidence; it shall not be my fault if your enemy does not live to put you past even my mending. Twenty-five thousand lire! Why, with good luck I shall be able to work at phthisis for another ten years to come."

III.

or not, and that to discover the cause would be to discover the cure. And with this belief grew the ambition to be the man by whom the mutually dependent cause and cure were to be found.

Nevertheless, into practice he had not even yet begun to fall. He had, in one way and another, some thousands of patients, and yet had never received a fee. No doubt he did not go the right way to attract patients to come to him; but the same old professor who had made that solitary criticism on his sanity was fond of saying that a physician who would prosper must bear in mind that even the most interesting of patients is, after all, a fellowcreature, and never goes twice to the practitioner who thinks of nothing but curing him; which also may have had someanything to do with the matter. Saverio Calò-as a fellow-student more flippantly and brutally put it gave a patient an idea that he would rather prefer, on the whole, not to cure him, so that he might have another opportunity of looking inside for the cause. In any case, things began to be serious; they seemed to threaten a phthisis or atrophy of the purse, in which the most microscopic investigation would be unable to discover a centime.

THERE was no doubt a good deal of flightiness about Doctor Calò. But body who judged him by his mere manner would find himself considerably mistaken. The Parisian professors would have told you that they knew of no keener and cooler brain than the young Italian physician's; of no rising man from whom they expected greater things. It is true that his fellow-students had, from the first, styled him "The Madman," and had collected, or invented, any number of anecdotes to justify the title; and it is also Therefore had the doctor come on a true that one exceedingly shrewd old phy- visit to his native place, not for a holiday, sician had once said: "Calò? the best which he abhorred, nor out of home-sick. brain in France; but I'd sooner trust my-ness, which he never felt, but simply to self alone with a tiger than with Calò. A see if among the Calò family, which is man without a heart is madder than a man without a brain. Look at his eyes." But he never said anything more; and it was not such an easy thing to look steadily at Dr. Cald's eyes. And long before he was out of his studentship his nickname had become a title of honor, and then forgotten. Of course such a man was destined to be a specialist by nature; and gradually he directed his studies more and more

extensive and complicated in those parts, there might be some fractional inheritance waiting to be claimed. And therefore, also, he had not been sorry to fall across a briefless advocate almost at his first ar rival, who might be glad to take a case cheaply. For, as mostly happens, his enthusiasm in one direction was balanced by corresponding prudence in most others.

Seeing that "La Traviata," the only

opera for which he cared, was set down | It was true he wanted money badly; but for performance, he spent his evening at he was far too much of a physician by the theatre; and then, after the very few nature to measure his interest in a case by hours' sleep which he had trained himself its possible profits; though Merrick did to find enough, a long swim in the sea, and not think so, he would really throw over a a lounge in the sunshine, he began to think dozen emperors for a coal-heaver, if the of a round of visits to his relations, in the coal-heaver's case promised him more to hope of hearing something that he might learn. He had half a mind to at once asturn to his advantage. And he was en- tonish his patient and vindicate the honor gaged in putting the last touches to such of his profession by coldly undertaking a toilet as might become a physician from the case for nothing; but the other half Paris, and arranging degrees of long-for- of his mind was wiser, and he did not tell gotten cousinship in his mind to whistled Mr. Merrick that health is one of the only scraps of last night's music, when- two things which money cannot buy.

"Dr. Calò?" said a voice that seemed to come from some cousin twenty times removed at the very least, so feeble it sounded, and so far away.

"You see it's really important I should get well," said Mr. Merrick, sinking into a chair. "It's not as if I was some poor devil who doesn't matter whether he lives "I am Dr. Saverio Cald," he answered, or dies. I've got seven thousand a year instinctively stiffening into an extra-pro-pounds sterling! and how can a man fessional air at the emaciated figure which could easily have entered through the merest chink of the door.

-

"Ah! Then doubtless you have heard of Merrick the famous Albert Merrick who has baffled your whole precious faculty for years? I'm he."

"You wish to consult me?"

"I hear you're fresh from Paris. I haven't been in Paris for a long while, so maybe they've found out something or other since my time. I never heard speak of you till last night, so I suppose you aren't much to speak of; but you're another doctor, and that's enough for me. Look here! I tell you what I tell every doctor I see: I've got an income of a hundred and seventy thousand francs a year, and I'll give five-and-twenty thousand, money down, to the doctor who'll cure me of this cold. A pretty good fee- eh?"

get the good out of his money unless he's
well? It isn't, either, as if I didn't know
the use of money. I tell you, doctor, it's
hard. There's such a lot of good I could
do. I could go into the best society; I
could keep a cellar fit for a duke; I could
have my whack and my fling; and I might
double my capital all the while, for I'm
one that knows how to make pleasure pay.
Now, I put it as man to man
look at
me, and say if it isn't hard!"
Dr. Calò did look at him, and sharply,
but he did not say.

Mr. Merrick's huskiness had become a whine. "And then there's a pack of wretches, poor relations, without a hundred pounds among them, and serve them right-it's my duty to live to disappoint every man and woman Jack of 'em; and I'll do it, if I die. No, I don't mean that; but you know what I mean. Why, would you believe it?—there's a cousin of mine, a poor devil of a curate, that had the face to write to me the other day for a loan of five pounds, because his wife was ill, and he'd got a sixth child, and a lot of stuff about a wolf and a door — as if there was any wolves in England, and as if, if there was, they'd look for flesh on a curate's bones!"

"It was fortunate for the poor man to have so rich cousin," said Dr. Calò, for the sake of saying something while he

"Gammon ! Don't tell me that the doctors will leave a millionaire with the measles for a coal-heaver with a cholera. Do you think I'd go to them if they were a pack of fools? For twenty-five thousand francs I feel safe that the best of them tries his very best. I've figured it all out, and based my reckoning on a care-used his eyes. ful estimate of the highest professional income. I've reckoned that less mightn't be enough, but that more would be wasted. That's business; and a man that gives less or more than he need for what he wants is a fool."

"Pig!" the doctor would have exclaimed, had he spoken his thought aloud.

“Wasn't it? If he hadn't, he wouldn't have had the lesson I sent him on the wickedness of giving to beggars - political economy, you know; pauperizes the population and the other wickedness of one pauper marrying another, and keeping up the breed. He's wiser now. He won't trv the begging-letter dodge again. My