"The manner in which you were consigned to me last night made me
doubt."
"I consigned to you? But, indeed, I forget. It yet remains for me to
learn how I fell into your hands."
"Why, under circumstances that puzzled me. I had been in attendance
all day yesterday on a case of singularly interesting and critical
character; the disease being rare, and its treatment doubtful: I saw a
similar and still finer case in a hospital in Paris; but that will not
interest you. At last a mitigation of the patient's most urgent
symptoms (acute pain is one of its accompaniments) liberated me, and I
set out homeward. My shortest way lay through the Basse-Ville, and as
the night was excessively dark, wild, and wet, I took it. In riding
past an old church belonging to a community of Beguines, I saw by a
lamp burning over the porch or deep arch of the entrance, a priest
lifting some object in his arms. The lamp was bright enough to reveal
the priest's features clearly, and I recognised him; he was a man I
have often met by the sick beds of both rich and poor: and chiefly the
latter. He is, I think, a good old man, far better than most of his
class in this country; superior, indeed, in every way, better
informed, as well as more devoted to duty. Our eyes met; he called on
me to stop: what he supported was a woman, fainting or dying. I
alighted.
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