The young man turned red with pleasure.
"Doña Gertrudis, you flatter me; I have no other desert than that of sticking fast to whatever I undertake, and this seems to me absolutely necessary in whatever career one devotes himself to."
"You are quite right. The main thing is to apply one's self to what lies before him, and not go wool-gathering. Now, for example, take Don Maximo. It cannot be denied that he has great knowledge, and I wish him well, but he has the misfortune of not applying himself to anything that is said to him, and therefore he scarcely ever hits the mark. Please tell me, Isidorito, how is it possible for man to succeed in curing one, if when the invalid is telling him her sufferings, he sets himself to work sharpening lead-pencils or drumming with his fingers. You don't know how I have suffered on account of him. I pray God may not set down against him the harm he has done me. My husband is very fond of him—and so am I too, you must believe me. In spite of all, he is a good man, and it's twenty-four years since he first entered this house; but I must tell the truth though it is hard: the poor man has the misfortune of not applying himself—of not applying himself little or much."
"Just so, just so. Don Maximo, in my opinion, lacks those gifts of observation indispensable to the profession to which he belongs. Perhaps it may surprise you to know what qualifications are needed for the practice of medicine from a scientific point of view; it is my own private opinion, which I am ready to sustain anywhere, either in public or in private. Medicine, in my judgment, is nothing else whatever than an empirical profession, purely empirical. I repeat that it is my private opinion, and that I expound it as such, but I harbor the belief that very soon it will be a truth universally accepted."
"The truth is, Isidorito, that he has simply not understood me. Day before yesterday I spent the whole day with a roaring in my head as though a lot of drums were beating behind it. At the same time this left knee was so swollen that I could not even walk from my room to the dining-room. I sent a message to Don Maximo, and he did not appear till it was dark. I assure you I passed a wretched day, and if it had not been for some tallow plasters which my daughter Marta put on my temples at midnight, I should certainly have died, for Don Maximo did not think it necessary even to have a lamp lighted to see me."
"What you point out still more confirms my assertion. You see how domestic remedies, administered without other judgment than that suggested by experience, by the results obtained in a long series of cases, sometimes operate on the organism in a more successful way than scientific medicine. Such a thing could not happen in our profession, señora, where all the chances that may occur are foreseen in advance by the laws, or by jurisprudence raised into the category of the law. There is not a single litigation which does not find its adequate solution in the civil codes, nor can any crime or misdeed whatsoever be committed, without provision being made for it in some article of the penal code. And in order that nothing may even be wanting the free will of the tribunals (I except the usual interpretation), we have as a supplement the canonical law, which is an abundant source of rules for conduct, though these all are based principally on equity."
"Certainly, certainly, Isidorito. Doctors absolutely do not understand a single thing. If I could measure out into bottles, once for all, the medicine that I have taken, I could very easily open an apothecary shop. And yet here you see me just as I was at the very beginning,—at the very beginning,—without having made a single step in advance. God grants me great resignation, otherwise—Just consider! yesterday I was as usual, but to-day, my fête-day too, what I suffer I'm sure will be the death of me, the death of me;—an uneasiness throughout my body,—a crawling up and down my legs like ants,—a rumbling in my ears. You who have so much talent, don't you know what it is to have a rumbling in the ears?"
"Señora, I think—ahem—that a purely nervous state is answerable for this infirmity,—nervous alterations are so varied and extraordinary—ahem—that it is not possible to reduce them to fixed principles, and so it is much better not to lay down any rule, but to study them in detail, or let each one stand separately."
It was hard work, but at last he extricated himself from the difficulty. Isidorito was a lean, bashful young man, with deep precocious wrinkles in his cheeks, with thin hair and goggle eyes. He was regarded as one of the most serious-minded youths, or perhaps the most serious-minded youth of the town, and always served as a mirror for the fathers of families, to hold up before their rattlebrain sons. "Don't you see how well Isidorito behaves in society, and with what aplomb he talks on all sorts of subjects?" "Ah, if you were like Isidorito, what a happy old age you would make me spend!" "Shame on you for letting Isidorito be made doctor of laws these four years, while you have not succeeded in graduating as a licentiate yet, you blockhead!"
Doña Gertrudis, wife of Don Mariano Elorza, the master of the house in which we find ourselves, is seated, or, to speak more correctly, is reclining, in an easy-chair at Isidorito's side. Although she had not yet passed her forty-fifth year, she appeared to be as old as her husband, who was now approaching his sixtieth. Not entirely lacking in her cadaverous and faded face were the lines of an exceptional beauty, which had given much to talk about there from 1846 to 1848, and which had redounded to her in a multitude of ballads, sonnets, and acrostics, by the most distinguished poets of the town, inserted in a weekly journal entitled El Judio Errante, which was published at that time in Nieva. Doña Gertrudis preserved with great care a gorgeously bound collection of Judios Errantes, and was in the habit of assuring her friends that if the young man who signed his acrostics with a V and three stars had not faded away with quick consumption, he would have been by this time the fashionable poet; and that if another lad, named Ulpiano Menéndez, who disguised himself under the pseudonym of The Moor of Venice, had not gone off to America to make his fortune in business, he would have been, at least, as great as Ayola, Campoamor, or Nuño de Arce. Don Mariano, her husband, shared the same conviction, although at another epoch the lyric poet, as well as the merchant, had caused him great anxieties, and not a few times had disturbed the peaceful course of his love; but he was a just man and fond of giving every one his due.