had now acquired a striking sharpness, and in the quick glance I caught
there was an expression, both suffering and searching, which made me
indescribably sad. I have seen sick people look at me in the same way,
when they were afraid they were to be operated upon; and I thought I now
understood at any rate this much, that what wanted operating on here was
my friend's confidence, and this would require all my dexterity.

I was once the most confiding fellow under the sun; but since I became a
doctor and saw what people really are, I have become thoroughly
suspicious; for there is nothing in the whole world you may not have to
presuppose, even with the best of mortals, if you do not want to be
misled as to the cause of their disease. I suspect everybody and
everything, even, as the reader has seen above, those sedate men who go
out in stormy weather. An Indian does not steal more unperceived and
noiselessly through a primeval forest than I, when necessary, into my
patient's confidence; and my friend David had all at once become my
patient. He would scarcely succeed in deceiving _me_ any longer with his
talk about "old days" and a glass of punch in his "unchanged student's
den."

My first strategem was now hastily to continue the inspection of the
room, which my friend had somewhat cursorily allowed me to begin. I
took the lamp and began to look about me.

Under the sloping ceiling, against the wall opposite the sofa, was the
bed, with a little round table beside it. On some bookshelves, which
stood on the floor against the wall in the corner at the foot of the
bed, I recognised Henrik Wergeland's bust, even more defective about the
chin and nose than in my time, and now, in addition, blind in one eye;
he had fared almost as badly as the old pipe I used to smoke, which I