"The devil! the canon here!" said Doctor Gasterini to himself. "Cursed accident!"
Abbe Ledoux, at the sight of Dom Diego"s collapse,--a pathetic picture,--turned to the doctor, and said:
"I think, really, the canon must be ill. What is the matter with him?
Your arrival is fortunate, my dear doctor; wait,--here is a vial of salts, it will a.s.sist his breathing."
Hardly was the bottle placed to the nostrils of the canon when he sneezed violently, with a cavernous bellowing, then coming out of his fainting fit, but not having the strength to rise, he turned his languid eyes, suffused with tears, to the doctor, and said, with an accent which he wished to be stern, but which was only tender:
"Ah, cruel man!"
"Cruel!" said the abbe, bewildered, "why do you call the doctor cruel, Dom Diego?"
"Yes," interposed the physician, perfectly calm and smiling, "what cruelty can you accuse me of, sir?"
"You ask that, you ingrate!" said the canon. "You dare ask that!"
"What! you call the doctor an ingrate!" said the abbe.
"The doctor!" said the canon, "what doctor?"
"Why, my friend, the man to whom you are speaking," said the abbe, "my friend standing there, Doctor Gasterini."
"He!" cried the canon, rising abruptly. "I tell you that is my tempter, my seducer!"
"The devil! he sees him everywhere," said the abbe, impatiently. "I repeat it to you that the gentleman is Doctor Gasterini, my friend."
"And I repeat to you, abbe," cried Dom Diego, "that the gentleman is the great cook of whom I have spoken to you!"
"Doctor," said the abbe, earnestly, "in the name of Heaven, do explain this blunder."
"There is no blunder at all, my dear abbe."
"What?"
"The canon speaks the truth," replied Doctor Gasterini. "Day before yesterday I had the pleasure of preparing a dish for him; for, in order to have the honour of calling yourself a glutton, you must have a practical acquaintance with the culinary art."
CHAPTER XI.
The abbe, amazed, looked at Doctor Gasterini, unable to believe what he had heard; at last he said:
"What! you, doctor, have cooked dishes for Dom Diego? You! you?"
"Yes, I, my dear abbe."
"A doctor," exclaimed the canon, in his turn amazed, "a physician?"
"Yes, canon," replied Doctor Gasterini, "I am a physician, which does not prevent my being a pa.s.sable cook."
"Pa.s.sable!" cried the canon, "say rather, divine! But what means this--"
"I comprehend all!" replied Abbe Ledoux, after having remained silent and thoughtful a moment, "the plot was skilfully contrived."
"What is it that you comprehend, abbe? Of what plot are you talking?"
said the canon, who, after his first astonishment, began to wonder how a physician could be such an extraordinary cook. "I pray you explain yourself, abbe!"
"Do you know, Dom Diego," asked the abbe, with a bitter smile, "who Doctor Gasterini is?"
"But," stammered the canon, wiping the perspiration from his brow, for he had been making superhuman efforts to penetrate the mystery, "everything is so complicated--so strange--that--"
"Doctor Gasterini," cried the abbe, "is the uncle of Captain Horace! Do you understand now, Dom Diego, the diabolical trick the doctor has played you? Do you understand that he has played upon your deplorable gluttony in order to get such a hold on you that he might induce you to abandon your pursuit of Captain Horace, his nephew, and afterward to induce you to consent to the marriage of your niece and the captain? Do you understand at last to what point you have been duped? Do you see the depth of the abyss you have escaped?"
"My G.o.d! this great cook a doctor! And he is the uncle of Captain Horace!" murmured the canon, stunned by the revelation. "He is not a real cook! Oh, illusion of illusions!"
The doctor remained silent and imperturbable.
"Hey, have you been duped enough?" asked the abbe. "Have you played a sufficiently ridiculous role? And do you now believe that the ill.u.s.trious Doctor Gasterini, one of the princes of science, who has fifty thousand a year income, would hire himself to you as a cook? Was I wrong in saying that you had been made a scoff and jeer for other persons" amus.e.m.e.nt?"
Every word from the abbe exasperated the anger, the grief, and the despair of the canon. The last remark above all. "Do you think the celebrated Doctor Gasterini would hire himself for wages," gave a mortal blow to the last illusions that Dom Diego cherished. Turning to the doctor, he said, with an ill-concealed anger:
"Ah, sir, do you recollect the evil you have done me? I may die of it, perhaps, but I will have my revenge, if not on you, at least on that rascal, your nephew, and on my unworthy niece, who, no doubt, is also in this abominable intrigue!"
"Well, courage, Dom Diego; this righteous vengeance will not tarry,"
said Abbe Ledoux.
Then he turned to the doctor, and said, sarcastically:
"Ah, doctor, you are doubtless a very shrewd, clever man, but you know the best players sometimes lose the best games, and you will lose this one!"
"Perhaps," said the doctor, smiling; "who knows?"
"Come, my dear abbe, come," cried the canon, pale and exasperated; "come, let us see the king"s attorney, and then we will hasten the departure of my niece."
And, turning to the doctor, he said:
"To employ arms so perfidious, so disloyal! to deceive a confiding and inoffensive man with this odious Machiavellism! I who have eaten with my eyes shut, I who have taken delight upon the very brink of an abyss! Ah, sir, it is abominable, but I will have my revenge!"
"And this very instant," said the abbe. "Come, Dom Diego, follow me. A thousand pardons, my dear doctor, to leave you so abruptly, but you understand moments are precious."
The canon, boiling with rage, was about to follow the abbe when Doctor Gasterini said, in a calm voice:
"Canon, a word if you please."
"If you listen to him, you are lost, Dom Diego!" cried the abbe, dragging the canon with him. "The evil spirit himself is not more insidious than this infernal doctor. Decide for yourself after the trick he has played on you. Come, come!"
"Canon," said the doctor, seizing Dom Diego by the right sleeve, while the abbe, who held the worthy man by the left sleeve, was using every effort to force him to follow him. "Canon," repeated the doctor, "just one word, I pray you."