Page:Achmed Abdullah--Wings.djvu/70

54 to a pointed, inquisitive chin, was a Frenchman, with the sane, sweet logic and the sane, sweet sympathy of the Frenchman; a man who endeavored to understand everything and everybody, and to condone according to his understanding.

He lived just around the corner from the prince, in an old house of the Passage du Commerce, next door to Durel's quaint book-shop—a stone's throw from the spot where, many years ago, famed M. Guillotin had made experiments on sheep with the blade of his newly invented "philanthropic machine for beheading."

The doctor was a busy man. The bell of his little apartment was forever tinkling; he had no time to read more than the headlines of either Gaulois or Patrie, and he had never had sufficient leisure to speculate about Prince Pavel Narodkine's strange habits.

And then, late one warm spring evening, a lumpish Russian, in tall, oiled boots and silken blouse, burst into his office and implored him, in a terrible jargon and by half a dozen assorted Greek orthodox saints, to come at once to the bedside of his master—"He is sick, sick, very sick!" The doctor felt there was no time to lose, and so he picked up his