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The Atheist's Mass..............................................................................................................................................1

Bianchon, a physician to whom science owes a fine system of theoretical physiology, and who, while still

young, made himself a celebrity in the medical school of Paris, that central luminary to which European

doctors do homage, practised surgery for a long time before he took up medicine. His earliest studies were

guided by one of the greatest of French surgeons, the illustrious Desplein, who flashed across science like a

meteor. By the consensus even of his enemies, he took with him to the tomb an incommunicable method.

Like all men of genius, he had no heirs; he carried everything in him, and carried it away with him. The glory

of a surgeon is like that of an actor: they live only so long as they are alive, and their talent leaves no trace

when they are gone. Actors and surgeons, like great singers too, like the executants who by their performance

Desplein is a case in proof of this resemblance in the destinies of such transient genius. His name, yesterday

so famous, today almost forgotten, will survive in his special department without crossing its limits. For

must there not be some extraordinary circumstances to exalt the name of a professor from the history of

Science to the general history of the human race? Had Desplein that universal command of knowledge which

makes a man the living word, the great figure of his age? Desplein had a godlike eye; he saw into the sufferer

and his malady by an intuition, natural or acquired, which enabled him to grasp the diagnostics peculiar to the

individual, to determine the very time, the hour, the minute when an operation should be performed, making

due allowance for atmospheric conditions and peculiarities of individual temperament. To proceed thus, hand

in hand with nature, had he then studied the constant assimilation by living beings, of the elements contained

in the atmosphere, or yielded by the earth to man who absorbs them, deriving from them a particular

expression of life? Did he work it all out by the power of deduction and analogy, to which we owe the genius

of Cuvier? Be this as it may, this man was in all the secrets of the human frame; he knew it in the past and in

But did he epitomize all science in his own person as Hippocrates did and Galen and Aristotle? Did he guide

a whole school towards new worlds? No. Though it is impossible to deny that this persistent observer of

human chemistry possessed that antique science of the Mages, that is to say, knowledge of the elements in

fusion, the causes of life, life antecedent to life, and what it must be in its incubation or ever it IS, it must be

confessed that, unfortunately, everything in him was purely personal. Isolated during his life by his egoism,

that egoism is now suicidal of his glory. On his tomb there is no proclaiming statue to repeat to posterity the

But perhaps Desplein's genius was answerable for his beliefs, and for that reason mortal. To him the

terrestrial atmosphere was a generative envelope; he saw the earth as an egg within its shell; and not being

able to determine whether the egg or the hen first was, he would not recognize either the cock or the egg. He

believed neither in the antecedent animal nor the surviving spirit of man. Desplein had no doubts; he was

positive. His bold and unqualified atheism was like that of many scientific men, the best men in the world,

but invincible atheistsatheists such as religious people declare to be impossible. This opinion could

scarcely exist otherwise in a man who was accustomed from his youth to dissect the creature above all

othersbefore, during, and after life; to hunt through all his organs without ever finding the individual soul,

which is indispensable to religious theory. When he detected a cerebral centre, a nervous centre, and a centre

for aerating the bloodthe first two so perfectly complementary that in the latter years of his life he came to

a conviction that the sense of hearing is not absolutely necessary for hearing, nor the sense of sight for seeing,

and that the solar plexus could supply their place without any possibility of doubtDesplein, thus finding

two souls in man, confirmed his atheism by this fact, though it is no evidence against God. This man died, it

is said, in final impenitence, as do, unfortunately, many noble geniuses, whom God may forgive.

The life of this man, great as he was, was marred by many meannesses, to use the expression employed by his

enemies, who were anxious to diminish his glory, but which it would be more proper to call apparent

contradictions. Envious people and fools, having no knowledge of the determinations by which superior

spirits are moved, seize at once on superficial inconsistencies, to formulate an accusation and so to pass

sentence on them. If, subsequently, the proceedings thus attacked are crowned with success, showing the

correlations of the preliminaries and the results, a few of the vanguard of calumnies always survive. In our

day, for instance, Napoleon was condemned by our contemporaries when he spread his eagle's wings to alight

As, in Desplein, his glory and science were invulnerable, his enemies attacked his odd moods and his temper,

whereas, in fact, he was simply characterized by what the English call eccentricity. Sometimes very

handsomely dressed, like Crebillon the tragical, he would suddenly affect extreme indifference as to what he

wore; he was sometimes seen in a carriage, and sometimes on foot. By turns rough and kind, harsh and

covetous on the surface, but capable of offering his whole fortune to his exiled masterswho did him the

honor of accepting it for a few daysno man ever gave rise to such contradictory judgements. Although to

obtain a black ribbon, which physicians ought not to intrigue for, he was capable of dropping a prayerbook

out of his pocket at Court, in his heart he mocked at everything; he had a deep contempt for men, after

studying them from above and below, after detecting their genuine expression when performing the most

The qualities of a great man are often federative. If among these colossal spirits one has more talent than wit,

his wit is still superior to that of a man of whom it is simply stated that "he is witty." Genius always

presupposes moral insight. This insight may be applied to a special subject; but he who can see a flower must

be able to see the sun. The man who on hearing a diplomate he has saved ask, "How is the Emperor?" could

say, "The courtier is alive; the man will follow!"that man is not merely a surgeon or a physician, he is

prodigiously witty also. Hence a patient and diligent student of human nature will admit Desplein's exorbitant

pretensions, and believeas he himself believedthat he might have been no less great as a minister than

Among the riddles which Desplein's life presents to many of his contemporaries, we have chosen one of the

most interesting, because the answer is to be found at the end of the narrative, and will avenge him for some

Of all the students in Desplein's hospital, Horace Bianchon was one of those to whom he most warmly

attached himself. Before being a house surgeon at the HotelDieu, Horace Bianchon had been a medical

student lodging in a squalid boarding house in the Quartier Latin, known as the Maison Vauquer. This poor

young man had felt there the gnawing of that burning poverty which is a sort of crucible from which great

talents are to emerge as pure and incorruptible as diamonds, which may be subjected to any shock without

being crushed. In the fierce fire of their unbridled passions they acquire the most impeccable honesty, and get

into the habit of fighting the battles which await genius with the constant work by which they coerce their

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 deeplyseated 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 outspokennot as a sailor, for

nowadays sailors are wily diplomatesbut 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 Orestescreditors 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

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 wateringplace 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 menone 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 famebecame intimate

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

One day Bianchon spoke to Desplein of a poor watercarrier of the SaintJacques district, who had a horrible

disease caused by fatigue and want; this wretched Auvergnat had had nothing but potatoes to eat during the

dreadful winter of 1821. Desplein left all his visits, and at the risk of killing his horse, he rushed off, followed

by Bianchon, to the poor man's dwelling, and saw, himself, to his being removed to a sick house, founded by

the famous Dubois in the Faubourg SaintDenis. Then he went to attend the man, and when he had cured him

he gave him the necessary sum to buy a horse and a waterbarrel. This Auvergnat distinguished himself by

an amusing action. One of his friends fell ill, and he took him at once to Desplein, saying to his benefactor, "I

Rough customer as he was, Desplein grasped the watercarrier's hand, and said, "Bring them all to me."

He got the native of Cantal into the HotelDieu, where he took the greatest care of him. Bianchon had

already observed in his chief a predilection for Auvergnats, and especially for water carriers; but as Desplein

took a sort of pride in his cures at the HotelDieu, the pupil saw nothing very strange in that.

One day, as he crossed the Place SaintSulpice, Bianchon caught sight of his master going into the church at

about nine in the morning. Desplein, who at that time never went a step without his cab, was on foot, and

slipped in by the door in the Rue du Petit Lion, as if he were stealing into some house of ill fame. The house

surgeon, naturally possessed by curiosity, knowing his master's opinions, and being himself a rabid follower

of Cabanis (Cabaniste en dyable, with the y, which in Rabelais seems to convey an intensity of

devilry)Bianchon stole into the church, and was not a little astonished to see the great Desplein, the atheist,

who had no mercy on the angelswho give no work to the lancet, and cannot suffer from fistula or

gastritisin short, this audacious scoffer kneeling humbly, and where? In the Lady Chapel, where he

remained through the mass, giving alms for the expenses of the service, alms for the poor, and looking as

"He has certainly not come here to clear up the question of the Virgin's delivery," said Bianchon to himself,

astonished beyond measure. "If I had caught him holding one of the ropes of the canopy on Corpus Christi

day, it would be a thing to laugh at; but at this hour, alone, with no one to seeit is surely a thing to marvel

Bianchon did not wish to seem as though he were spying the head surgeon of the HotelDieu; he went away.

As it happened, Desplein asked him to dine with him that day, not at his own house, but at a restaurant. At

dessert Bianchon skilfully contrived to talk of the mass, speaking of it as mummery and a farce.

"A farce," said Desplein, "which has cost Christendom more blood than all Napoleon's battles and all

Broussais' leeches. The mass is a papal invention, not older than the sixth century, and based on the Hoc est

corpus. What floods of blood were shed to establish the FeteDieu, the Festival of Corpus Christithe

institution by which Rome established her triumph in the question of the Real Presence, a schism which rent

the Church during three centuries! The wars of the Count of Toulouse against the Albigenses were the tail

end of that dispute. The Vaudois and the Albigenses refused to recognize this innovation."

In short, Desplein was delighted to disport himself in his most atheistical vein; a flow of Voltairean satire, or,

He said nothing; he began to doubt whether he had really seen his chief at SaintSulpice. Desplein would not

have troubled himself to tell Bianchon a lie, they knew each other too well; they had already exchanged

thoughts on quite equally serious subjects, and discussed systems de natura rerum, probing or dissecting them

Three months went by. Bianchon did not attempt to follow the matter up, though it remained stamped on his

memory. One day that year, one of the physicians of the HotelDieu took Desplein by the arm, as if to

"I went to see a priest who has a diseased kneebone, and to whom the Duchesse d'Angouleme did me the

"Oh, he goes to see damaged knees in church!He went to mass," said the young man to himself.

Bianchon resolved to watch Desplein. He remembered the day and hour when he had detected him going into

SaintSulpice, and resolved to be there again next year on the same day and at the same hour, to see if he

should find him there again. In that case the periodicity of his devotion would justify a scientific

investigation; for in such a man there ought to be no direct antagonism of thought and action.

Next year, on the said day and hour, Bianchon, who had already ceased to be Desplein's house surgeon, saw

the great man's cab standing at the corner of the Rue de Tournon and the Rue du PetitLion, whence his

friend jesuitically crept along by the wall of SaintSulpice, and once more attended mass in front of the

Virgin's altar. It was Desplein, sure enough! The master surgeon, the atheist at heart, the worshiper by

chance. The mystery was greater than ever; the regularity of the phenomenon complicated it. When Desplein

had left, Bianchon went to the sacristan, who took charge of the chapel, and asked him whether the gentleman

"For twenty years that I have been here," replied the man, "M. Desplein has come four times a year to attend

"A mass founded by him!" said Bianchon, as he went away. "This is as great a mystery as the Immaculate

Some time elapsed before Doctor Bianchon, though so much his friend, found an opportunity of speaking to

Desplein of this incident of his life. Though they met in consultation, or in society, it was difficult to find an

hour of confidential solitude when, sitting with their feet on the firedogs and their head resting on the back

of an armchair, two men tell each other their secrets. At last, seven years later, after the Revolution of 1830,

when the mob invaded the Archbishop's residence, when Republican agitators spurred them on to destroy the

gilt crosses which flashed like streaks of lightning in the immensity of the ocean of houses; when Incredulity

flaunted itself in the streets, side by side with Rebellion, Bianchon once more detected Desplein going into

SaintSulpice. The doctor followed him, and knelt down by him without the slightest notice or demonstration

"Will you tell me, my dear fellow," said Bianchon, as they left the church, "the reason for your fit of

monkishness? I have caught you three times going to mass You! You must account to me for this

mystery, explain such a flagrant disagreement between your opinions and your conduct. You do not believe

in God, and yet you attend mass? My dear master, you are bound to give me an answer."

"I am like a great many devout people, men who on the surface are deeply religious, but quite as much

And he poured out a torrent of epigrams on certain political personages, of whom the best known gives us, in

"All that has nothing to do with my question," retorted Bianchon. "I want to know the reason for what you

"Faith! my dear boy," said Desplein, "I am on the verge of the tomb; I may safely tell you about the

At this moment Bianchon and the great man were in the Rue des QuatreVents, one of the worst streets in

Paris. Desplein pointed to the sixth floor of one of the houses looking like obelisks, of which the narrow door

opens into a passage with a winding staircase at the end, with windows appropriately termed "borrowed

lights"or, in French, jours de souffrance. It was a greenish structure; the ground floor occupied by a

furnituredealer, while each floor seemed to shelter a different and independent form of misery. Throwing up

"I know; Arthez lived there; I went up there almost every day during my first youth; we used to call it then

"The mass I have just attended is connected with some events which took place at the time when I lived in the

garret where you say Arthez lived; the one with the window where the clothes line is hanging with linen over

a pot of flowers. My early life was so hard, my dear Bianchon, that I may dispute the palm of Paris suffering

with any man living. I have endured everything: hunger and thirst, want of money, want of clothes, of shoes,

of linen, every cruelty that penury can inflict. I have blown on my frozen fingers in that PICKLEJAR OF

GREAT MEN, which I should like to see again, now, with you. I worked through a whole winter, seeing my

head steam, and perceiving the atmosphere of my own moisture as we see that of horses on a frosty day. I do

not know where a man finds the fulcrum that enables him to hold out against such a life.

"I was alone, with no one to help me, no money to buy books or to pay the expenses of my medical training; I

had not a friend; my irascible, touchy, restless temper was against me. No one understood that this irritability

was the distress and toil of a man who, at the bottom of the social scale, is struggling to reach the surface.

Still, I had, as I may say to you, before whom I need wear no draperies, I had that groundbed of good

feeling and keen sensitiveness which must always be the birthright of any man who is strong enough to climb

to any height whatever, after having long trampled in the bogs of poverty. I could obtain nothing from my

family, nor from my home, beyond my inadequate allowance. In short, at that time, I breakfasted off a roll

which the baker in the Rue du PetitLion sold me cheap because it was left from yesterday or the day before,

and I crumbled it into milk; thus my morning meal cost me but two sous. I dined only every other day in a

boardinghouse where the meal cost me sixteen sous. You know as well as I what care I must have taken of

my clothes and shoes. I hardly know whether in later life we feel grief so deep when a colleague plays us

false as we have known, you and I, on detecting the mocking smile of a gaping seam in a shoe, or hearing the

armhole of a coat split, I drank nothing but water; I regarded a cafe with distant respect. Zoppi's seemed to

me a promised land where none but the Lucullus of the pays Latin had a right of entry. 'Shall I ever take a cup

of coffee there with milk in it?' said I to myself, 'or play a game of dominoes?'

"I threw into my work the fury I felt at my misery. I tried to master positive knowledge so as to acquire the

greatest personal value, and merit the position I should hold as soon as I could escape from nothingness. I

consumed more oil than bread; the light I burned during these endless nights cost me more than food. It was a

long duel, obstinate, with no sort of consolation. I found no sympathy anywhere. To have friends, must we

not form connections with young men, have a few sous so as to be able to go tippling with them, and meet

them where students congregate? And I had nothing! And no one in Paris can understand that nothing means

NOTHING. When I even thought of revealing my beggary, I had that nervous contraction of the throat which

makes a sick man believe that a ball rises up from the oesophagus into the larynx.

"In later life I have met people born to wealth who, never having wanted for anything, had never even heard

this problem in the rule of three: A young man is to crime as a fivefranc piece is to X.These gilded idiots

say to me, 'Why did you get into debt? Why did you involve yourself in such onerous obligations?' They

remind me of the princess who, on hearing that the people lacked bread, said, 'Why do not they buy cakes?' I

should like to see one of these rich men, who complain that I charge too much for an operation,yes, I

should like to see him alone in Paris without a sou, without a friend, without credit, and forced to work with

his five fingers to live at all! What would he do? Where would he go to satisfy his hunger?

"Bianchon, if you have sometimes seen me hard and bitter, it was because I was adding my early sufferings

on to the insensibility, the selfishness of which I have seen thousands of instances in the highest circles; or,

perhaps, I was thinking of the obstacles which hatred, envy, jealousy, and calumny raised up between me and

success. In Paris, when certain people see you ready to set your foot in the stirrup, some pull your coattails,

others loosen the buckle of the strap that you may fall and crack your skull; one wrenches off your horse's

shoes, another steals your whip, and the least treacherous of them all is the man whom you see coming to fire

"You yourself, my dear boy, are clever enough to make acquaintance before long with the odious and

incessant warfare waged by mediocrity against the superior man. If you should drop fiveandtwenty louis

one day, you will be accused of gambling on the next, and your best friends will report that you have lost

twentyfive thousand. If you have a headache, you will be considered mad. If you are a little hasty, no one

can live with you. If, to make a stand against this armament of pigmies, you collect your best powers, your

best friends will cry out that you want to have everything, that you aim at domineering, at tyranny. In short,

your good points will become your faults, your faults will be vices, and your virtues crime.

"If you save a man, you will be said to have killed him; if he reappears on the scene, it will be positive that

you have secured the present at the cost of the future. If he is not dead, he will die. Stumble, and you fall!

Invent anything of any kind and claim your rights, you will be crotchety, cunning, illdisposed to rising

"So, you see, my dear fellow, if I do not believe in God, I believe still less in man. But do not you know in

me another Desplein, altogether different from the Desplein whom every one abuses?However, we will not

"Well, I was living in that house, I was working hard to pass my first examination, and I had no money at all.

You know. I had come to one of those moments of extremity when a man says, 'I will enlist.' I had one hope.

I expected from my home a box full of linen, a present from one of those old aunts who, knowing nothing of

Paris, think of your shirts, while they imagine that their nephew with thirty francs a month is eating ortolans.

The box arrived while I was at the schools; it had cost forty francs for carriage. The porter, a German

shoemaker living in a loft, had paid the money and kept the box. I walked up and down the Rue des

FossesSaintGermaindesPres and the Rue de l'Ecole de Medecine without hitting on any scheme which

would release my trunk without the payment of the forty francs, which of course I could pay as soon as I

should have sold the linen. My stupidity proved to me that surgery was my only vocation. My good fellow,

refined souls, whose powers move in a lofty atmosphere, have none of that spirit of intrigue that is fertile in

resource and device; their good genius is chance; they do not invent, things come to them.

"At night I went home, at the very moment when my fellow lodger also came ina watercarrier named

Bourgeat, a native of Saint Flour. We knew each other as two lodgers do who have rooms off the same

landing, and who hear each other sleeping, coughing, dressing, and so at last become used to one another. My

neighbor informed me that the landlord, to whom I owed three quarters' rent, had turned me out; I must clear

out next morning. He himself was also turned out on account of his occupation. I spent the most miserable

night of my life. Where was I to get a messenger who could carry my few chattels and my books? How could

I pay him and the porter? Where was I to go? I repeated these unanswerable questions again and again, in

tears, as madmen repeat their tunes. I fell asleep; poverty has for its friends heavenly slumbers full of

"Next morning, just as I was swallowing my little bowl of bread soaked in milk, Bourgeat came in and said to

" 'Mouchieur l'Etudiant, I am a poor man, a foundling from the hospital at SaintFlour, without either father

or mother, and not rich enough to marry. You are not fertile in relations either, nor well supplied with the

ready? Listen, I have a handcart downstairs which I have hired for two sous an hour; it will hold all our

goods; if you like, we will try to find lodgings together, since we are both turned out of this. It is not the

" 'I know that, my good Bourgeat,' said I. 'But I am in a great fix. I have a trunk downstairs with a hundred

francs' worth of linen in it, out of which I could pay the landlord and all I owe to the porter, and I have not a

" 'Pooh! I have a few dibs,' replied Bourgeat joyfully, and he pulled out a greasy old leather purse. 'Keep your

"Bourgeat paid up my arrears and his own, and settled with the porter. Then he put our furniture and my box

of linen in his cart, and pulled it along the street, stopping in front of every house where there was a notice

board. I went up to see whether the rooms to let would suit us. At midday we were still wandering about the

neighborhood without having found anything. The price was the great difficulty. Bourgeat proposed that we

should eat at a wine shop, leaving the cart at the door. Towards evening I discovered, in the Cour de Rohan,

Passage du Commerce, at the very top of a house next the roof, two rooms with a staircase between them.

Each of us was to pay sixty francs a year. So there we were housed, my humble friend and I. We dined

together. Bourgeat, who earned about fifty sous a day, had saved a hundred crowns or so; he would soon be

able to gratify his ambition by buying a barrel and a horse. On learning of my situationfor he extracted my

secrets with a quiet craftiness and good nature, of which the remembrance touches my heart to this day, he

gave up for a time the ambition of his whole life; for twentytwo years he had been carrying water in the

Desplein at these words clutched Bianchon's arm tightly. "He gave me the money for my examination fees!

That man, my friend, understood that I had a mission, that the needs of my intellect were greater than his. He

looked after me, he called me his boy, he lent me money to buy books, he would come in softly sometimes to

watch me at work, and took a mother's care in seeing that I had wholesome and abundant food, instead of the

bad and insufficient nourishment I had been condemned to. Bourgeat, a man of about forty, had a homely,

mediaeval type of face, a prominent forehead, a head that a painter might have chosen as a model for that of

Lycurgus. The poor man's heart was big with affections seeking an object; he had never been loved but by a

poodle that had died some time since, of which he would talk to me, asking whether I thought the Church

would allow masses to be said for the repose of its soul. His dog, said he, had been a good Christian, who for

twelve years had accompanied him to church, never barking, listening to the organ without opening his

mouth, and crouching beside him in a way that made it seem as though he were praying too.

"This man centered all his affections in me; he looked upon me as a forlorn and suffering creature, and he

became, to me, the most thoughtful mother, the most considerate benefactor, the ideal of the virtue which

rejoices in its own work. When I met him in the street, he would throw me a glance of intelligence full of

unutterable dignity; he would affect to walk as though he carried no weight, and seemed happy in seeing me

in good health and well dressed. It was, in fact, the devoted affection of the lower classes, the love of a girl of

the people transferred to a loftier level. Bourgeat did all my errands, woke me at night at any fixed hour,

trimmed my lamp, cleaned our landing; as good as a servant as he was as a father, and as clean as an English

girl. He did all the housework. Like Philopoemen, he sawed our wood, and gave to all he did the grace of

simplicity while preserving his dignity, for he seemed to understand that the end ennobles every act.

"When I left this good fellow, to be house surgeon at the Hotel Dieu, I felt an indescribable, dull pain,

knowing that he could no longer live with me; but he comforted himself with the prospect of saving up

money enough for me to take my degree, and he made me promise to go to see him whenever I had a day out:

Bourgeat was proud of me. He loved me for my own sake, and for his own. If you look up my thesis, you will

"During the last year of my residence as house surgeon I earned enough to repay all I owed to this worthy

Auvergnat by buying him a barrel and a horse. He was furious with rage at learning that I had been depriving

myself of spending my money, and yet he was delighted to see his wishes fulfilled; he laughed and scolded,

he looked at his barrel, at his horse, and wiped away a tear, as he said, 'It is too bad. What a splendid barrel!

"I never saw a more touching scene. Bourgeat insisted on buying for me the case of instruments mounted in

silver which you have seen in my room, and which is to me the most precious thing there. Though enchanted

with my first success, never did the least sign, the least word, escape him which might imply, 'This man owes

all to me!' And yet, but for him, I should have died of want; he had eaten bread rubbed with garlic that I

"He fell ill. As you may suppose, I passed my nights by his bedside, and the first time I pulled him through;

but two years after he had a relapse; in spite of the utmost care, in spite of the greatest exertions of science, he

succumbed. No king was ever nursed as he was. Yes, Bianchon, to snatch that man from death I tried

unheardof things. I wanted him to live long enough to show him his work accomplished, to realize all his

hopes, to give expression to the only need for gratitude that ever filled my heart, to quench a fire that burns in

"Bourgeat, my second father, died in my arms," Desplein went on, after a pause, visibly moved. "He left me

everything he possessed by a will he had had made by a public scrivener, dating from the year when we had

"This man's faith was perfect; he loved the Holy Virgin as he might have loved his wife. He was an ardent

Catholic, but never said a word to me about my want of religion. When he was dying he entreated me to spare

no expense that he might have every possible benefit of clergy. I had a mass said for him every day. Often, in

the night, he would tell me of his fears as to his future fate; he feared his life had not been saintly enough.

Poor man! he was at work from morning till night. For whom, then, is Paradiseif there be a Paradise? He

received the last sacrament like the saint that he was, and his death was worthy of his life.

"I alone followed him to the grave. When I had laid my only benefactor to rest, I looked about to see how I

could pay my debt to him; I found he had neither family nor friends, neither wife nor child. But he believed.

He had a religious conviction; had I any right to dispute it? He had spoken to me timidly of masses said for

the repose of the dead; he would not impress it on me as a duty, thinking that it would be a form of repayment

for his services. As soon as I had money enough I paid to SaintSulpice the requisite sum for four masses

every year. As the only thing I can do for Bourgeat is thus to satisfy his pious wishes, on the days when that

mass is said, at the beginning of each season of the year, I go for his sake and say the required prayers; and I

say with the good faith of a sceptic'Great God, if there is a sphere which Thou hast appointed after death

for those who have been perfect, remember good Bourgeat; and if he should have anything to suffer, let me

suffer it for him, that he may enter all the sooner into what is called Paradise.'

"That, my dear fellow, is as much as a man who holds my opinions can allow himself. But God must be a

good fellow; He cannot owe me any grudge. I swear to you, I would give my whole fortune if faith such as

Bianchon, who was with Desplein all through his last illness, dares not affirm to this day that the great

surgeon died an atheist. Will not those who believe like to fancy that the humble Auvergnat came to open the

gate of Heaven to his friend, as he did that of the earthly temple on whose pediment we read the words"A

Bianchon, Horace Father Goriot Cesar Birotteau The Commission in Lunacy Lost Illusions A Distinguished

Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A

Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A

Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary

Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the

Desplein Cousin Pons Lost Illusions The Thirteen The Government Clerks Pierrette A Bachelor's

Establishment The Seamy Side of History Modeste Mignon Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine