"'This is the master's room; you don't need me to talk to him.'
"And she vanished. I glanced at my clothes to see if I was presentable, and was brushing a speck of dust off my trousers, when I heard a dull but prolonged groan.
"'The devil!' thought I; 'can it be my patient groaning like that? The man is sicker than he thinks.'
"But the groaning seemed to come nearer; suddenly it changed into a loud barking, and an enormous dog rushed from the room I was about to enter, planted his front paws on my chest, and glared at me with eyes that were far from gentle! I confess, mesdames, that at the first shock I could not control my alarm! As he stood, the dog was taller than I!"
Honorine and Agathe could not restrain a smile at this portion of the doctor's narrative.
"Almost immediately," he continued, "a voice called: 'who is there? there's someone there; who is it, Ami?'
"'Yes, monsieur,' said I in a trembling voice, 'it is a friend—ami—who has come to see you.'—I unconsciously made a pun, for I soon discovered that the Newfoundland's name was Ami, and that it was he to whom the gentleman was speaking. I must say, for the dog's justification, that he did not keep his paws on me long, and that, after contemplating me for a few moments, he walked away from me as from a person who was not at all dangerous.
"As there was no further obstacle to my passage, I entered the sick man's room at last. I saw a man, still young, lying in bed; he was very pale, with a very forbidding expression; and as he wore a full beard and enormous moustaches, together with a great quantity of brown hair which lay in disorder about his forehead, he really was not unlike a man of the woods or an orang-outang of the larger species."
"So this man is very ugly, very repulsive to look at?" inquired Honorine.
"It is not so much that he is positively ugly, madame, but that savage look—you know. However, he did not give me much time to examine him, for I had hardly reached the middle of the room when he cried: