“‘Doctor, I don’t sleep—I believe this treatment agitates me’.... ‘That’s what you need!’ ‘Doctor, I am always so sleepy—I think it must be that mineral water.’... ‘That’s what you need!’
“What he seems to need more than anything else is that his tour of visits should be made quickly, in order that he may be at his consultation office before ten o’clock, in that little fly-box where the patients are crammed together as far out as the stairs and down the steps as far as the curb-stone. And I can tell you he doesn’t loaf much, but whips you off a prescription without stopping for one moment his jumping and prancing, like a bather who is trying to get his ‘reaction.’
“O, yes, that reaction! That’s another story, too. As for me, I shall take neither baths nor douches, so I don’t make my reaction, but I remain sometimes a quarter of an hour under the lindens of the park, looking at the march up and down of all these people who walk with long, regular steps and a deeply absorbed look, passing each other without saying one word. My old gentleman of the inhalation hall, the man who tries to propitiate the springs, carries on this exercise with the same punctuality and conscientiousness. At the entrance to the shaded walk he comes to a full stop, shuts his white umbrella, turns down the collar of his coat, looks at his watch, and—forward, march! Each leg stiff, elbows to his side, one, two! one, two! as far as the long pencil of white light which the absence of a tree, forming there an opening, throws across the alley at that point. He never goes farther than that, raises his arms three times as if he had dumb-bells in his hands, then returns in the same fashion, brandishes dumb-bells once more, and does this for fifteen turns, one after the other. I have an idea that the department for the crazy people at Charenton must have somewhat the same features that my alley presents about eleven o’clock in the morning.”
6 August.
“So it is true, after all, Numa is coming to see us? O, how delighted I am! how delighted I am! Your letter has just come by the one o’clock mail which is distributed at the office of the hotel. It is a solemn moment which is decisive of the hue and color of the entire day. The office is crammed and people arrange themselves in a semicircle around fat Mme. Laugeron, who is very imposing in her morning gown of blue flannel, whilst in her authoritative voice with a bit of manner in it, the voice of a former lady’s companion, she reads off the many-colored addresses of the mail. At the call each one advances, and it is my duty to tell you that we put a certain amount of personal pride in having a big mail. In what does one not show some personal pride, for the matter of that, during this perpetual rubbing shoulders of vanities and of follies? Just to think that I should reach the point of being proud of my two hours of inhalation!
“‘The Prince of Anhalt—M. Vasseur—Mlle. Le Quesnoy—’ Deceived again! it is only my fashion journal. ‘Mlle. Le Quesnoy—’ I give a glance to see if there is nothing more for me and skip with your dear letter away down to the end of the garden, where there is a bench surrounded by big walnuts.
“Here it is—this is my own bench, the corner where I go to be alone in order to dream and build my Spanish castles; for it is a singular thing that in order to invent well and to develop oneself intellectually according to the precepts laid down by M. Baudouy, I do not need very wide horizons. If my landscape is too big, I lose myself in it, I scatter myself, ’tis all up with me. The only bore about my bench is the neighborhood of the swing, where that little Bachellery girl passes half her day in letting herself be swung into space by the young man who believes in having springs. I should think he must have plenty of spring in order to push her that way by the hour together; at every moment come babyish cries and musical roulades: ‘Higher, higher yet, a little more—’
“Heavens! How that girl does get on my nerves! I wish that swing would pass her off and up into a cloud and that she would never come back again!
“Things are so nice upon my bench, so far away, when she is not there! I have thoroughly enjoyed your letter, the postscript of which made me utter a cry of delight.
“O, blessed be Chambéry and its new college and that corner-stone to be laid, which brings the Minister of Public Instruction into our district. He will be very comfortable here for the preparation of his speech, either walking about our shady alley, the ‘reaction alley,’ (come, that wasn’t bad for a pun!) or else beneath my walnuts, when Miss Bachellery is not scaring them with her cries. My dear Numa! I get on so well with him; he is so lively, so gay! How we shall chat together about our Rosalie and the serious motive which prevents her from travelling at this time—O great Heavens, that was a secret!—and poor mamma, who has made me swear so often about it! she is the one who will be glad enough to see dear Numa again. On this occasion she quite lost every sort of timidity or modesty; you ought to have seen the majesty with which she entered the office of the hotel in order to take an apartment for her son-in-law, the Minister! O, what fun, the face of our landlady hearing this news!