"One morning, Monsieur Luminot, formerly a wholesale dealer in wines, who is very well-to-do, and has a fine house and a good deal of land in this region--Monsieur Luminot, I say, took it into his head to make this Monsieur Paul"s acquaintance.
"I must tell you, mesdames, that Monsieur Luminot is a lively old fellow, a _bon vivant_ and wag, who often gives dinners and entertains handsomely. He is highly esteemed all about here.
"He said to himself: "The master of the Tower probably divined that Madame Droguet had hidden in a clump of bushes in order to pop out in front of him, and he didn"t like it. I can understand that; men don"t like to have traps laid for them, or to be watched for and spied upon.
I"ll go about it in an entirely different way; I"ll go straight to this gentleman and tell him that I have come as a neighbor, to call on him, and I will invite him to dinner. He will say at all events: "Here"s a man who acts honestly, and doesn"t lie in wait for me in the bushes."--I feel sure that he will welcome me more courteously than he did Madame Droguet."
"And one fine day, after his breakfast, Monsieur Luminot bent his steps toward the Tower. He rang the bell at the main gate which was always kept locked, saying to himself that if Mere Lucas should answer the bell, he would ask her to take him to her master. But it was not the old peasant who opened the gate, it was the master of the house himself; he stared at Monsieur Luminot with an air of amazement, and said in his hoa.r.s.e voice, not even allowing him to enter his premises:
""What do you want, monsieur?"
"Our quondam wine merchant, who is not easily abashed, began to laugh as he replied:
""Pardieu! it is you I want, neighbor, for I am sure that you are the master of the house. I am Luminot, a land-owner at Ch.e.l.les, a _bon vivant_, always staunch at the table, always ready to let my friends taste my wine, which is not bad, I flatter myself. You don"t go to see anybody, you keep yourself shut up here like a bear in his den; that"s not the way to enjoy yourself! and I have come to ask you to dine with me to-morrow."
""I thank you, monsieur," replied the man with the dog, "but, as I entertain no one here, I do not go to other people"s houses."--And with that he shut the gate in his face.
"Then it became Monsieur Luminot"s turn to feel angry; he came home shouting as loudly as Madame Droguet had:
""Who in the devil is this fellow that"s bought the Tower? The man"s worse than a savage! I undertake to be polite to him, to invite him to dinner, and he shuts the door in my face without letting me cross the threshold, without even asking me to sit down and take something! I could have forgiven him for declining my invitation, but he might at least have given me a taste of his wine! Decidedly he"s a devilish mean kind of a neighbor."
"This, mesdames, is the way that people learned to know this eccentric personage; it only remains for me to tell you of my personal experience.
"A year had pa.s.sed since these incidents, and people were beginning to talk a little less about the proprietor of the Tower--for we become accustomed to everything, and by dint of discussing any one person there comes a time when we have nothing more to say--when, as I was returning one day from Gournay, where I had been to see a patient, I met Mere Lucas, the old woman who composed the whole of Monsieur Paul"s establishment. I was pa.s.sing her without stopping, but she accosted me, saying:
""Oh! I am glad I met you, Monsieur le Docteur Antoine Beaubichon; it"s as if Providence sent you on purpose, for I was just thinking that I"d have to go to your house."
""Do you want to consult me, Mere Lucas?" said I; "are you sick? what"s the matter with you?"
""No, monsieur le docteur, I"m not sick; to be sure I"m not very strong, but the cracked pots last longer than the new ones sometimes, you know.
It isn"t for myself that I was going to see you, but for my master, Monsieur Paul; he"s sick, hasn"t left his bed for two whole weeks, and he must be feeling very bad, for he"s a man that don"t take any care of himself, and I had hard work to get him to drink some herb tea."
""Ah! the owner of the Tower is sick, is he? Did he tell you to summon a doctor?"
""No, indeed he didn"t! on the contrary, every time I say to him: "You ought to have a doctor, monsieur, and if you say so I"ll go and call the doctor at Ch.e.l.les, Monsieur Beaubichon, who"s very learned and very skilful," he says: "Let me alone, Mere Lucas! I don"t need a doctor, I won"t have one; if I have got to die, I can die without doctors, and if it is the will of heaven that I live, they won"t be the ones to cure me; nature will come to my a.s.sistance.""
""Well," I said to the old peasant, "as this gentleman doesn"t want a doctor, why were you coming to fetch me?"
""Why, monsieur, as if we ought to listen to sick folks, especially when they"re so peculiar as my master! He don"t get any better since he said that; on the contrary, he is much weaker since yesterday, and he seems to be suffering more. So it"s my duty to take care of him in spite of him; and as it"s your business to cure people, monsieur le docteur, you can"t refuse to prescribe for my master."
"I reflected for some time; I am certainly not so inquisitive as Madame Droguet, and I am not the man to crouch in the bushes for five days in succession watching for a man I don"t know. And yet I was not sorry to obtain a nearer view of that strange man who avoided everybody, and to be able to judge for myself whether Madame Droguet and neighbor Luminot had not been a little severe on him. To make a long story short, as the old servant still begged me to go with her to the Tower, I said to myself: "I may as well go; the man is sick; I am asked to go to see a sick man, and it"s my duty to go; that"s my profession."
"So I started off with Mere Lucas. On the way, I ventured to ask a few questions about the proprietor.
"The old peasant"s constant refrain was:
""Oh! he"s a very nice man! an excellent man!"
"As the woman is deaf, I concluded that she didn"t hear my questions and that she naturally answered at random.
"We reached the Tower in due time, and I entered the house, which, although well furnished--richly furnished indeed--seemed to me wretchedly kept. I pa.s.sed through several rooms and at last reached a door which the peasant motioned to me to open, saying:
""This is the master"s room; you don"t need me to talk to him."
"And she vanished. I glanced at my clothes to see if I was presentable, and was brushing a speck of dust off my trousers, when I heard a dull but prolonged groan.
""The devil!" thought I; "can it be my patient groaning like that? The man is sicker than he thinks."
"But the groaning seemed to come nearer; suddenly it changed into a loud barking, and an enormous dog rushed from the room I was about to enter, planted his front paws on my chest, and glared at me with eyes that were far from gentle! I confess, mesdames, that at the first shock I could not control my alarm! As he stood, the dog was taller than I!"
Honorine and Agathe could not restrain a smile at this portion of the doctor"s narrative.
"Almost immediately," he continued, "a voice called: "who is there?
there"s someone there; who is it, Ami?"
""Yes, monsieur," said I in a trembling voice, "it is a friend--_ami_--who has come to see you."--I unconsciously made a pun, for I soon discovered that the Newfoundland"s name was Ami, and that it was he to whom the gentleman was speaking. I must say, for the dog"s justification, that he did not keep his paws on me long, and that, after contemplating me for a few moments, he walked away from me as from a person who was not at all dangerous.
"As there was no further obstacle to my pa.s.sage, I entered the sick man"s room at last. I saw a man, still young, lying in bed; he was very pale, with a very forbidding expression; and as he wore a full beard and enormous moustaches, together with a great quant.i.ty of brown hair which lay in disorder about his forehead, he really was not unlike a man of the woods or an orang-outang of the larger species."
"So this man is very ugly, very repulsive to look at?" inquired Honorine.
"It is not so much that he is positively ugly, madame, but that savage look--you know. However, he did not give me much time to examine him, for I had hardly reached the middle of the room when he cried:
""Who are you, monsieur, and what do you want?"
""Monsieur," said I, bowing politely, "I am Doctor Antoine Beaubichon, long a resident of Ch.e.l.les, and favorably known hereabout, I venture to say. I attend the whole neighborhood, even a long way beyond the Marne."
""Well, what difference does it make to me whether you attend the whole neighborhood?" retorted the sick man in an impatient tone. "Why have you come to my house? I didn"t send for you, I don"t need a doctor."
""Monsieur," I said, "I took the liberty of coming here only because I was requested to do so, requested most urgently."
""By whom?"
""Mere Lucas, your servant, who is much concerned about your health, and who realizes that you are sicker than you think."
""Mere Lucas is meddling in something that doesn"t concern her. I know my own business best. I tell you again, monsieur, that I do not need a doctor, and that you may go."
"As you can imagine, mesdames, not being accustomed to that sort of reception, I was already near the door, ready to take my leave and sorely vexed that I had put myself out for such a boor, when I heard him calling to me:
""Monsieur! monsieur! one moment!"
""Aha!" thought I, "he thinks better of it; he is in pain, no doubt, and realizes that there is n.o.body but myself who can relieve him. I will go back, for we must be indulgent to invalids."
"I turned back toward the bed; the bearded man was sitting up, and his great dog was beside him, also sitting on his haunches. I was preparing to feel the invalid"s pulse, when he abruptly drew his arm away, and said:
""It isn"t for myself, monsieur. My dog here hurt his shoulder some time ago pa.s.sing through a holly bush, and he still suffers from it. What ought we to put on the wound?"
"When I found that it was for his Newfoundland that he had called me back, I drew myself up to my full height and said to the unmannerly fellow:
""Let me tell you, monsieur, that I am no dog doctor! If you called me back on this animal"s account, you might have saved yourself the trouble."