The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de MaupassantЧитать онлайн книгу.
with Charlotte Oriol. He was whispering in her ear in that tender fashion which denotes a courtship begun; and she was smiling behind her fan, blushing, and apparently delighted.
Paul heard a voice saying behind him: “Look here! look here at M. de Ravenel whispering gallantries to my fair patient.”
He added, after a pause: “And there is a pearl, good, gay, simple, devoted, upright, you know, an excellent creature. She is worth ten of the elder sister. I have known them since their childhood — these little girls. And yet the father prefers the elder one, because she is more — more like him — more of a peasant — less upright — more thrifty — more cunning —— and more — more jealous. Ah! she is a good girl, all the same. I would not like to say anything bad of her; but, in spite of myself, I compare them, you understand — and, after having compared them, I judge them — there you are!”
The waltz was coming to an end; Gontran went to join his friend, and, perceiving the doctor:
“Ah! tell me now — there appears to me to be a remarkable increase in the medical body at Enval. We have a Doctor Mazelli who waltzes to perfection and an old little Doctor Black who seems on very good terms with Heaven.”
But Doctor Honorat was discreet. He did not like to sit in judgment on his professional brethren.
French
X
THE burning question now was that of the physicians at Enval. They had suddenly made themselves the masters of the district, and absorbed all the attention and all the enthusiasm of the inhabitants. Formerly the springs flowed under the authority of Doctor Bonnefille alone, in the midst of the harmless animosities of restless Doctor Latonne and placid Doctor Honorat.
Now, it was a very different thing. Since the success planned during the winter by Andermatt had quite taken definite shape, thanks to the powerful cooperation of Professors Cloche, Mas-Roussel, and Remusot, who had each brought there a contingent of two or three hundred patients at least, Doctor Latonne, inspector of the new establishment, had become a big personage, specially patronized by Professor Mas-Roussel, whose pupil he had been, and whose deportment and gestures he imitated.
Docter Bonnefille was scarcely ever talked about any longer. Furious, exasperated, railing against Mont Oriol, the old physician remained the whole day in the old establishment with a few old patients who had kept faithful to him.
In the minds of some invalids, indeed, he was the only person that understood the true properties of the waters; he possessed, so to speak, their secret, since he had officially administered them from the time the station was first established.
Doctor Honorat barely managed to retain his practice among the natives of Auvergne. With the moderate income he derived from this source he contented himself, keeping on good terms with everybody, and consoled himself by much preferring cards and wine to medicine. He did not, however, go quite so far as to love his professional brethren.
Doctor Latonne would, therefore, have continued to be the great soothsayer of Mont Oriol, if one morning there had not appeared a very small man, nearly a dwarf, whose big head sunk between his shoulders, big round eyes, and big hands combined to produce a very odd-looking individual. This new physician, M. Black, introduced into the district by Professor Remusot immediately excited attention by his excessive devotion. Nearly every morning, between two visits, he went into a church for a few minutes, and he received communion nearly every Sunday. The curé soon got him some patients, old maids, poor people whom he attended for nothing, pious ladies who asked the advice of their spiritual director before calling on a man of science, whose sentiments, reserve, and professional modesty, they wished to know before everything else.
Then, one day, the arrival of the Princess de Maldebourg, an old German Highness, was announced —— a very fervent Catholic, who on the very evening when she first appeared in the district, sent for Doctor Black on the recommendation of a Roman cardinal. From that moment he was the fashion. It was good taste, good form, the correct thing, to be attended by him. He was the only doctor, it was said, who was a perfect gentleman — the only one in whom a woman could repose absolute confidence.
And from morning till evening this little man with the bulldog’s head, who always spoke in a subdued tone in every corner with everybody, might be seen rushing from one hotel to the other. He appeared to have important secrets to confide or to receive, for he could constantly be met holding long mysterious conferences in the lobbies with the masters of the hotels, with his patients’ chambermaids, with anyone who was brought into contact with the invalids. As soon as he saw any lady of his acquaintance in the street, he went straight up to her with his short, quick step, and immediately began to mumble fresh and minute directions, after the fashion of a priest at confession.
The old women especially adored him. He would listen to their stories to the end without interrupting them, took note of all their observations, all their questions, and all their wishes.
He increased or diminished each day the proportion of water to be consumed by his patients, which made them feel perfect confidence in the care taken of them by him.
“We stopped yesterday at two glasses and three-quarters,” he would say; “well, to-day we shall only take two glasses and a half, and tomorrow three glasses. Don’t forget! Tomorrow, three glasses.
I am very, very particular about it!”
And all the patients were convinced that he was very particular about it, indeed.
In order not to forget these figures and fractions of figures, he wrote them down in a memorandum-book, in order that he might never make a mistake. For the patient does not pardon a mistake of a single halfglass. He regulated and modified with equal minuteness the duration of the daily baths in virtue of principles known only to himself.
Doctor Latonne, jealous and exasperated, disdainfully shrugged his shoulders, and declared: “This is a swindler!” His hatred against Doctor Black had even led him occasionally to run down the mineral waters. “Since we can scarcely tell how they act, It is quite impossible to prescribe every day modifications of the dose, which any therapeutic law cannot regulate. Proceedings of this kind do the greatest injury to medicine.”
Doctor Honorat contented himself with smiling. He always took care” to forget, five minutes after a consultation, the number of glasses which he had ordered. “Two more or less,” said he to Gontran in his hours of gaiety, “there is only the spring to take notice of it; and yet this scarcely incommodes it!” The only wicked pleasantry that he permitted himself on his religious brother-physician consisted in describing him as “the doctor of the Holy Sitting-Bath.” His jealousy was of the prudent, sly, and tranquil kind.
He added sometimes: “Oh, as for him, he knows the patient thoroughly; and this is often better than to know the disease!”
But lo! there arrived one morning at the hotel of Mont Oriol a noble Spanish family, the Duke and Duchess of Ramas-Aldavarra, who brought with her her own physician, an Italian, Doctor Mazelli from Milan. He was a man of thirty, a tall, thin, very handsome young fellow, wearing only mustaches. From the first evening, he made a conquest of the table d’hote, for the Duke, a melancholy man, attacked with monstrous obesity, had a horror of isolation, and desired to take his meals in the same diningroom as the other patients. Doctor Mazelli already knew by their names almost all the frequenters of the hotel; he had a kindly word for every man, a compliment for every woman, a smile even for every servant.
Placed at the right-hand side of the Duchess, a beautiful woman of between thirty-five and forty, with a pale complexion, black eyes, blue-black hair, he would say to her as each dish came round:
“Very little,” or else, “No, not this,” or else, “Yes, take some of that.” And he would himself pour out the liquid which she was to drink with very