“You in a peruke!” exclaimed the lady, hardly knowing whether to laugh or to cry at the idea of her lover in a wig.
“It is the symbol and livery of science. Without it, it appears, I cannot be a doctor.”
The lady insisted, by way of compromise, that she should be permitted to select the wig; and she expressly made choice of one of such colossal dimensions and of so easy a fit, that poor Audry looked more like a fool than a physician in it. But it helped to bring him into fashion. He was considered as an old gentleman; and young ladies admitted him to their circles and causeries, from which they affected to banish youth of aspect less mature. His popularity was on the increase, just as an adventure happened to him, which might have shaken a reputation more firmly established.
He was one evening summoned to attend a wealthy English Peer, whose mansion was in the Rue Tournon. His way thither led him beneath the window of his fair friend, who had been rather piqued by his success among the ladies, and who had previously resolved to overthrow both cause and effect connected therewith. She was a pretty, sparkling, and joyously mischievous girl of some three-and-twenty years; and her father loved her nearly as much as he did fishing, which, for an enthusiastic angler as he was, was no small proof of paternal affection. The damsel contrived so well that, as the doctor passed, she flung her line, with the paternal fish-hook at the end of it, and caught up the wig therewith as lightly as her father would have picked up a trout.
Dr. Audry looked up in astonishment, and prayed for his professional peruke in vain. Being hurried, moreover, he passed on his way, and repaired to his patient with a head like Mr. Buckstone’s in Scrub.
When Lord A⸺ beheld him he exclaimed, “What! waited upon by the assistant, when I sent for the principal?—by a student, when I needed a practitioner?—but perhaps you are Doctor Audry’s nephew:—well, my groom has the same sort of rheumatism that I have; be kind enough to go and look after him.”
Audry, in his memoirs, in telling the tale, does not forget the sequel. Thus insulted, he rushed, in a rage, to the offending lady, who met him with open arms and laughing eyes. “My dear doctor,” said she, “do not storm; Papa was just on the point of securing to you something better than a peruke,—a fortune!”
“You are a light—”
“Thing to be loved, as you love me: I know it,” said the lady archly, “but St. Severin is our parish nevertheless.”
“St. Severin our parish? I do not comprehend; unless I am authorized to go there and arrange for our marriage.”