“Where is the patient?” asked the doctor, rising like a man who knows the value of time.
“This way, monsieur,” said Godefroid, preceding him to show the way.
The Jew examined with a shrewd and suspicious eye the places he passed through, giving them the keen, rapid glance of a spy; he saw all the horrors of poverty through the door of the room in which the grandfather and the grandson lived; for, unfortunately, Monsieur Bernard had gone in to change his clothes before entering his daughter’s room, and in his haste to open the outer door to the doctor, he had forgotten to close that of his lair.
He bowed in a stately manner to Halpersohn, and opened the door of his daughter’s room cautiously.
“Vanda, my child, here is the doctor,” he said.
Then he stood aside to allow Halpersohn, who kept on his bear-skin pelisse, to pass him. The Jew was evidently surprised at the luxury of the room, which in this quarter, and more especially in this house, was an anomaly; but his surprise only lasted for an instant, for he had seen among German and Russian Jews many instances of the same contrast between apparent misery and hoarded wealth. As he walked from the door to the bed he kept his eye on the patient, and the moment he reached her he said in Polish:—
“You are a Pole?”
“No, I am not; my mother was.”
“Whom did your grandfather, Colonel Tarlowski, marry?”
“A Pole.”