CHAPTER XIII.
THE CONSULTATION.
Scarcely had the outer door closed upon Firmin when Monsieur Eugène finished his interview with the land-owner, and presently Catherine was asked to come into his office.
A strange man was Monsieur Eugène. He was rich in many good qualities, but he had one fault, or rather an unfortunate failing, which had practically destroyed those gifts of nature which would have made him a great success had he but devoted himself to one profession or one art.
Having received a liberal education in other branches, Eugène Bertier went to Paris to study medicine. For three years he applied himself to this science with an unusual enthusiasm. Not a student in the college could compare with him in diligence or knowledge. He was held up as an example to the other students, and was very popular among the foremost surgeons in the institution. One day a little child, a girl of fourteen, was brought to the hospital. She was a winsome, intelligent little thing who had been cruelly burned in a fire while attempting to save a baby brother. From the first moment he saw her Eugène gained an affection almost paternal for the little girl—his No. 17, as he called her, being his seventeenth patient.
The principal doctor said to him: “Monsieur Bertier, I place this little girl in your charge. I believe that you can cure her.”
Eugène accepted the trust, saying: “Yes, I am sure of it.”
The little girl had the utmost confidence in her young physician, and seeing with what tenderness he dressed her burns, she bore the pain with rare fortitude. The right side of her body was a mass of sores. With compressed lips she endured the agony of having the cotton changed, not a cry escaping her. When the pain was less intense, when she was comparatively easy, the young doctor questioned her concerning her family and home life, winning her confidence by his kind and sympathetic manner. Alas! little Madelaine’s story was a sad one. Her father, a well-born, honest, and worthy man, becoming financially embarrassed, had ended his troubles by committing suicide. He had left four children and a nervous, sickly wife to battle with the world. The mother soon afterward had died, and young Madelaine had been left to provide for her little brothers and sister—not for long, however, for in trying to save her youngest charge, who perished in a fire, she herself had been terribly burned, and the two other children had been handed over to charity.
Quite simply she told her story, as though her pain and suffering were but natural and merited. Monsieur Eugène was touched. “First,” he mentally concluded, “let me cure her and then I will see what can be done.”