Perhaps I shall owe to your curiosity the happiness of taking you once more by the hand--as in the days before Mesmer.

Always yours, Bouvard.
Stung like a lion by a gadfly the old scientist rushed to Paris and left his card on Bouvard, who lived in the Rue Ferou near Saint-Sulpice.
Bouvard sent a card to his hotel on which was written "To-morrow; nine o'clock, Rue Saint-Honore, opposite the Assumption." Minoret, who seemed to have renewed his youth, could not sleep.

He went to see some of his friends among the faculty to inquire if the world were turned upside down, if the science of medicine still had a school, if the four faculties any longer existed.

The doctors reassured him, declaring that the old spirit of opposition was as strong as ever, only, instead of persecuting as heretofore, the Academies of Medicine and of Sciences rang with laughter as they classed magnetic facts with the tricks of Comus and Comte and Bosco, with jugglery and prestidigitation and all that now went by the name of "amusing physics." This assurance did not prevent old Minoret from keeping the appointment made for him by Bouvard.

After an enmity of forty-four years the two antagonists met beneath a porte-cochere in the Rue Saint-Honore.
Frenchmen have too many distractions of mind to hate each other long.