Gil Blas, Alain-René Lesage [best romance ebooks .txt] 📗

not a wish to turn you aside from your resolution. Nor can I refrain from owning my malicious drift; when I advised you to show your face at the Duke of Lerma’s audience, it was for the purpose of ascertaining whether any seedlings of ambition were scattered among the fallows of your philosophy. Since that point is settled, and you are mortified to all the pomps and vanities of the world, let us make the best of our way from court, to go and suck in with Zephyrus and Flora the innocent, delicious pleasures so luxuriant in the nursery of our imaginations.”

In fact, we soon afterwards took our departure together, in a chaise drawn by two good mules, driven by a postilion whom I had added to my establishment. We stopped the first day at Alcalá de Henarès, and the second at Segovia, whence, without stopping to see our generous warden, Tordesillas, we went forward to Peñafiel on the Duero, and the next day to Valladolid. At sight of this large town, I could not help fetching a deep sigh. My companion, surprised at that conscientious ventilation, inquired the reason of it. “My good fellow,” said I, “it is because I practised medicine here for a long time. It gives me the horrors, even now, to think of my unexpiated murders. The whole list of killed and wounded are mustered in battle array yonder: the tomb and the hospital yawn with their disgorged inhabitants, who are rushing on to tear me piecemeal, and exact the vengeance due to the drenched crew.”

“What a dreadful fancy!” said my secretary. “In truth, Señor de Santillane, your nature is too tender. Why should you be shocked at the common course of exchange in your branch of trade? Look at all the oldest physicians: their withers are unwrung. What can exceed the self-complacency with which they view the exits of patients, and the entrances of diseases? Natural constitution bears the brunt of all their failures, and medical infallibility takes the credit of lucky accidents.”

“It is very true,” replied I, “that Doctor Sangrado, on whose practice I formed myself, was like the rest of the old physicians in point of self-complacency. It was to little purpose that twenty people in a day yielded to his prowess: he was so persuaded that bleeding in the arm and copious libations of warm water were specifics for every case, that instead of doubting whether the death of his patients might not possibly invalidate the efficacy of his prescriptions, he ascribed the result to a vacillating compliance with his system.”

“By all the powers!” cried Scipio with a burst of laughter, “you open to me an incomparable character.”

“If you have any curiosity to be better acquainted with him,” said I, “it may be gratified tomorrow, should Sangrado be still living, and resident at Valladolid: but it is highly improbable; for he had one foot in the grave when I left him several years ago.” Our first care, on putting up at the inn, was to inquire after this doctor. We were told that he was not dead; but, being incapacitated by age from paying visits or any other vigorous exertions, he had been superseded by three or four other doctors who had risen into repute by a new practice, accomplishing the same end by different means. We determined on lying by for a day at Valladolid, as well to rest our mules as to call on Señor Sangrado. About ten o’clock next morning we knocked at his door, and found him sitting in his elbow-chair, with a book in his hand. He rose on our entrance, advanced to meet us with a firm step for a man of seventy, and begged to know our business. “My worthy and approved good master,” said I, “have you lost all recollection of an old pupil? There was formerly one Gil Blas, as you may remember, a boarder in your house, and for some time your deputy.”

“What! is it you, Santillane?” answered he, with a cordial embrace. “I should not have known you again. It, however, gives me great pleasure to see you once more. What have you been doing since we parted? Doubtless you have made medicine your profession.”

“It was very strongly my inclination so to do,” replied I; “but imperious circumstances made me reluctantly abandon so illustrious a calling.”

“So much the worse,” rejoined Sangrado: “with the principles you sucked in under my tuition, you would have become a physician of the first skill and eminence, with the guiding influence of heaven to defend you from the dangerous allurements of chemistry. Ah, my son!” pursued he with a mournful air, “what a change in practice within these few years! The whole honor and dignity of the art is compromised. That mystery by whose inscrutable decrees the lives of men have in all ages been determined, is now laid open to the rude, untutored gaze of blockheads, novices, and mountebanks. Facts are stubborn things; and ere long the very stones will cry aloud against the rascality of these new practitioners: lapides clamabunt! Why, sir, there are fellows in this town, calling themselves physicians, who drag their degraded persons at the currus triumphalis antimonii, or, as it should properly be translated, the cart’s tail of antimony. Apostates from the faith of Paracelsus, idolaters of filthy kermes, healers at haphazard, who make all the science of medicine to consist in the preparation and prescription of drugs! What a change have I to announce to you! There is not one stone left upon another in the whole structure which our great predecessors had raised. Bleeding in the feet, for example, so rarely practised in better times, is now among the fashionable follies of the day. That gentle, civilized system of evacuation, which prevailed under my auspices, is subverted by the reign of anarchy and emetics, of quackery and poison. In short, chaos is come again! Everyone orders what seems good in