""Tartufes!" Hypocrites!" Spurned by the one man who might have saved him, Saniel cries at the departing Parisian cab. "And he say he acts out of conscience!"

Besieged by creditors, Saniel needs funds immediately -- even though his prospects with the hospital are practically assured. He has barely slept and has used every stratagem to earn a franc here and there -- medical practice, lectures, and private lessons -- but he has worked himself to the bone -- and apparently for naught!

"The weak kill themselves; the strong fight to their last breath," he tells himself. Yet his last resort, the loan-shark Caffie, refuses him, too -- but then offers a strange, startling solution: marriage to a widow!

In one of his most important works, French novelist Hector Malot (1830-1907) writes of the choices forced upon the intelligent individual by an uncaring society.