Dr. Aubertin was the last to succumb to the deep depression, but his time came: and he had been for a day or two as grave and as sad as the rest, when one day that Rose was absent, spying on Camille, he took the baroness and Josephine into his confidence; and condescended finally to ask their advice.
“It is humiliating,” said he, “after all my experience, to be obliged to consult unprofessional persons. Forty years ago I should have been TOO WISE to do so. But since then I have often seen science baffled and untrained intelligences throw light upon hard questions: and your sex in particular has luminous instincts and reads things by flashes that we men miss with a microscope. Our dear Madame Raynal suspected that plausible notary, and to this day I believe she could not tell us why.”
Josephine admitted as much very frankly.
“There you see,” said the doctor. “Well, then, you must help me in this case. And this time I promise to treat your art with more respect.”
“And pray who is it she is to read now?” asked the baroness.
“Who should it be but my poor patient? He puzzles me. I never knew a patient so faint-hearted.”
“A soldier faint-hearted!” exclaimed the baroness. “To be sure these men that storm cities, and fire cannon, and cut and hack one another with so much spirit, are poor creatures compared with us when they have to lie quiet and suffer.”
The doctor walked the room in great excitement. “It is not his wound that is killing him, there’s something on his mind. You, Josephine, with your instincts do help me: do pray, for pity’s sake, throw off that sublime indifference you have manifested all along to this man’s fate.”
“She has not,” cried the baroness, firing up. “Did I not see her lining his dressing-gown for him? and she inspects everything that he eats: do you not?”
“Yes, mother.” She then suggested in a faltering voice that time would cure the patient, and time alone.