CHAPTER IV.
When the doctor called that day, he found, sitting beside the little patient's pillow, a white-faced clown, who kept him in a constant ripple of laughter, and who was observing, as he stirred a lump of sugar at the bottom of a glass of cooling drink:
"You know, Francis, if you do not drink your medicine, you will never see Slap-bang again."
And the child drank up the draught.
"Is it not good?"
"Very good. Thank you, Slap-bang."
"Doctor," said the clown to the physician, "do not be jealous, but it seems to me that my tomfooleries have done more good than your prescriptions."
The poor parents were both crying; but this time it was with joy.
From that time till little Francis was on foot again, a carriage pulled up every day before the lodging of the workman in the Rue des Abbesses; a man descended, wrapped in a greatcoat with the collar turned up to his ears, and underneath arrayed as for the circus, with his gay visage white with flour.
"What do I owe you, sir?" said Jacques to the good clown, on the day when Francis left the house for the first time. "For I really owe you everything!"
The clown extended to the parents his two hands, huge as those of Hercules:
"A shake of the hand," he said. Then, kissing the little boy on both his rosy cheeks, he added, laughing, "And permission to inscribe on my visiting-cards, 'Slap-bang, doctor-acrobat, physician in ordinary to little Francis!'"
[Portraits of Celebrities at different times of their Lives.]
