but I can pay you well

As the stranger passed up the stairs, a young man of a form and countenance singularly unprepossessing emerged from a door in the entresol, and brushed beside him. His glance was furtive, sinister, savage, and yet timorous; the man’s face was of an ashen paleness, and the features worked convulsively. The stranger paused, and observed him with thoughtful looks, as he hurried down the stairs. While he thus stood, he heard a groan from the room which the young man had just quitted; the latter had pulled to the door with hasty vehemence, but some fragment, probably of fuel, had prevented its closing, and it now stood slightly ajar; the stranger pushed it open and entered. He passed a small anteroom, meanly furnished, and stood in a bedchamber of meagre and sordid discomfort. Stretched on the bed, and writhing in pain, lay an old man; a single candle lit the room, and threw its feeble ray over the furrowed and death-like face of the sick person. No attendant was by; he seemed left alone, to breathe his last. “Water,” he moaned feebly,—“water:— I parch,— I burn!” The intruder approached the bed, bent over him, and took his hand. “Oh, bless thee, Jean, bless thee!” said the sufferer; “hast thou brought back the physician already? Sir, I am poor, but I can pay you well. I would not die yet, for that young man’s sake.” And he sat upright in his bed, and fixed his dim eyes anxiously on his visitor. “What are your symptoms, your disease?” “Fire, fire, fire in the heart, the entrails: I burn!” “How long is it since you have taken food?” “Food! only this broth. There is the basin, all I have taken these six hours. I had scarce drunk it ere these pains began.” The stranger looked at the basin; some portion of the contents was yet left there. “Who administered this to you?” “Who? Jean! Who else should? I have no servant,— none! I am poor, very poor, sir. But no! you physicians do not care for the poor. I AM RICH! can you cure me?” “Yes, if Heaven permit. Wait but a few moments.”