To be pitied by his concierge!  This was too much.

“It is not as he told you,” he replied, haughtily.

“So much the better.  I am glad for you and for me.  You can pay my little bill.”

“Give it to me.”

“I have given it to you twice already, but I have a copy.  Here it is.”

To be sued by a creditor paralyzed Saniel; he was stunned, crushed, humiliated, and could only answer stupidly.  Taking the bill that the concierge handed him, he put it in his pocket and stammered a few words.

“You see, doctor, I must say what has been in my heart a long time.  You are my countryman, and I esteem you too much not to speak.  In taking your apartment and engaging your upholsterer, you did too much.  You ruin yourself.  Give up your apartment, and take the one opposite that costs less than half, and you will get on.  You will not be obliged to leave this quarter.  What will become of our neighbors if you leave us?  You are a good doctor; everybody knows it and says so.  And now, as for my bill, it is understood that I shall be paid first, shall I not?”

“As soon as I have the money I will pay you.”

“It is a promise?”

“I promise you.”

“Thank you very much.”

“If it could be to-morrow, it would suit me.  I am not rich, you know, but I have always paid the gas-bill for your experiments.”

With the paper in his pocket, Saniel returned to Caffie, who was just going out, and to whom he gave it.

“I will see about it this, evening,” said the man of business.  “Just now I am going to dinner.  Do not worry.  To-morrow I will do what is necessary.  Good-evening.  I am dying of hunger.”

But three days before, Saniel emptied his purse to soothe his upholsterer by an instalment as large as he was able to make it, keeping only five francs for himself, and with the few sous left he could not go to a resttaurant, not even the lowest and cheapest.  He could only buy some bread for his supper, and eat it while working, as he had often done before.

But when he returned to his rooms he was not in a state of mind to write an article that must be delivered that evening.  Among other things that he had undertaken was one, and not the least fastidious, which consisted in giving, by correspondence, advice to the subscribers of a fashion magazine, or, more exactly speaking, to recommend, in the form of medical advice, all the cosmetics, depilatories, elixirs, dyes, essences, oils, creams, soaps, pomades, toothpowders, rouges, and also all the chemists’ specialties, to which their inventors wished to give an authority that the public, which believes itself acute, refused to the simple advertisement on the last page.  With his ambition and the career before him, he would never have consented to carry on this correspondence under his own name.  He did it for a neighboring doctor, a simple man, who was not so cautious, and who signed his name to these letters, glad to get clients from any quarter.  For his trouble, Saniel took this doctor’s place during Sunday in summer, and from time to time received a box of perfumery or quack medicines, which he sold at a low price when occasion offered.