“Well then, I will tell you,” replied the servant, “if you will keep the secret, and not say you have heard it from me. He is, in truth, the physician of Sera.”
“Indeed;” said the host, “is he the physician who restores the dead to life?”
“Yes, he is,” replied the servant. “I am not quite certain, but according to the popular rumor, he went to the Grand Lama, and has been, I believe, appointed Court Physician. Properly speaking, I am not the servant that always attends on him. To confess the truth, as I came into his service only a little while before our departure, through the introduction of a drug-store keeper with whom I am acquainted. I don’t know my master very well; but at any rate, his influence as a physician in Lhasa is immense.”
“Well then,” said the inn-keeper, “by as quick processes as possible, I must get him a passport within four or five days.”
“It will be most embarrassing, if you cannot,” replied my servant.
“By the way,” said the inn-keeper, with great earnestness, “talking about the physician, I recall that, among my relatives, there is a most distressing case. Would it not be possible for him to examine the patient?”
Said my servant, with an air of disgust, “He never treats a patient. He is obstinate and stiff-necked. On our way here if he had treated patients he would easily have made money, but notwithstanding my urgency, he always refused to do so.”
“Would you not be so kind,” said the inn-keeper, requesting him eagerly, “as to intercede with him for me?”
“As the inn-keeper,” said the servant, coming into my room somewhat perplexed, “was enquiring about your person in various ways, I made a slip of the tongue, and told him that you were a physician. Since I have been told that there are many patients in this town, I request you to examine them during our detention here for four or five days.”
“If I were to act as you ask me,” answered I, with more or less anger in my voice, “and examine patients, there would be no end to it; it is impossible for me to see patients, as it would take too much time.”