He opened the door of one of the house-surgeon’s rooms.
A youngish looking man, with a straw-coloured beard, was seated before the fire, with a cigarette between his lips.
He rose to greet Thénard, was introduced to Adams, and, drawing an old couch a bit from the wall, he bade his guests be seated.
The armchair he retained himself. One of the legs was loose, and he was the only man in the Beaujon who had the art of sitting on it without smashing it. This he explained whilst offering cigarettes.
Thénard, like many another French professor, unofficially was quite one with the students. He would snatch a moment from his work to smoke a cigarette with them; he would sometimes look in at their little parties. I have seen him at a birthday party where the cakes and ale, to say nothing of the cigarettes and the unpawned banjo, were the direct products of a pawned microscope. I have seen him, I say, at a party like this, drinking a health to the microscope as the giver of all the good things on the table—he, the great Thénard, with an income of fifteen to twenty thousand pounds a year, and a reputation solid as the four massive text-books that stood to his name.
“Duthil,” said Thénard, “I have secured, I believe, a man for our friend Berselius.” He indicated Adams with a half laugh, and Dr. Duthil, turning in his chair, regarded anew the colossus from the States. The great, large-hewn, cast-iron visaged Adams, beside whom Thénard looked like a shrivelled monkey and Duthil like a big baby with a beard.
“Good,” said Duthil.
“A better man than Bauchardy,” said Thénard.
“Much,” replied Duthil.
“Who, then, was Bauchardy?” asked Adams, amused rather by the way in which the two others were discussing him.