He was a youthful and rather jaunty practitioner, but he had a clever face, and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor in his buttonhole; Newman listened attentively to the instructions he gave him before retiring, and took mechanically from his hand a small volume which the surgeon recommended as a help to wakefulness, and which turned out to be an old copy of "Faublas." Valentin was still lying with his eyes closed, and there was no visible change in his condition.

Newman sat down near him, and for a long time narrowly watched him.

Then his eyes wandered away with his thoughts upon his own situation, and rested upon the chain of the Alps, disclosed by the drawing of the scant white cotton curtain of the window, through which the sunshine passed and lay in squares upon the red-tiled floor.

He tried to interweave his reflections with hope, but he only half succeeded.

What had happened to him seemed to have, in its violence and audacity, the force of a real calamity--the strength and insolence of Destiny herself.