The observances adopted in the offices of lawyers, are likewise practised with consulting physicians; but sympathy should give to the tone or manner of the latter a more affectionate character. Patients well educated will beware of abusing it, and will keep to themselves all complaints which are useless towards a knowledge of their malady. They will answer the questions of the doctor in a clear, brief, and polite manner; and when these questions do not embrace the observations which they may have made on their own disorder, they will say so, at the same time observing some excuse like the following; I [p41] ask your pardon; this observation is perhaps idle, but being myself ignorant, and wishing to omit nothing, I submit it to your good judgment.
You ought to give frequent and heartfelt thanks to the physician who affords you his advice or attentions. The circumstance of his being unsuccessful does not exonerate you from these testimonies of gratitude; it renders them perhaps more obligatory, for delicacy requires that you should not appear tacitly to reproach him on account of his having been unfortunate in his efforts.
Being obliged to speak of different wants, and of different parts of the body, for which politeness has no appropriate language, the physician ought to avoid being obscure or gross, particularly when addressing ladies. A forgetfulness of these forms often renders insupportable even a meritorious and learned man.
Every one knows, with what delicate precautions a physician ought to speak before the patient and his family, of the nature of the illness and of the probable consequences when there exists any danger; in what guarded terms he should at last disclose to them a fatal termination, if unfortunately it has become inevitable. Every body knows, also, that however poignant may be the grief of parents, they ought never to let it appear in their conversations [p42] with the physician, that they regard him as the cause of their affliction.
SECTION V.
Politeness of Artists and Authors, and the Deference due to them.
Do artists come under the common rule, it will perhaps be said? and I shall ask, in my turn: Do they live like others,—these men, always absorbed in one strong and single conception, with which they, like the Creator, wish to animate matter?—who seek everywhere the secret of the beautiful which goads, infatuates, and evades them?—passionate, absorbed in thought, ingenuous, almost always strangers to calculation, to pleasure, and to the occupations of the world? No, they have a separate existence, one which the world does not comprehend, and which they ought to conceal from the world.
If, as we shall see hereafter, one should avoid speaking of his profession, and of his personal affairs, for a still stronger reason, an artist ought to be silent about his own labors, his success, and his hopes. People will accuse him of arrogance, of vanity, and perhaps even of madness; for enthusiasm is not [p43] included in, nor admitted into society, because there the ridiculous is feared above everything, and from the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step. Let him, then, reserve only for his friends, for true friends of the arts, his noble and striking bursts of inspiration.
People are also generally prone to suspect artists of jealousy. In order to escape this accusation, and at the same time preserve the right of telling their thoughts, they ought to commend warmly what appears to them good, and criticise with much moderation and without any raillery what is defective.
These observations are addressed equally to authors, with this important addition. Besides the charge of arrogance, people are much disposed to accuse them of pedantry. Let them therefore be careful, and check constantly the desire of entering into conversation upon the interesting subjects with which they are continually occupied. Let them always be in fear of obtaining the name of a bel esprit, a name which calls up so many recollections of pedantry and affectation.
A graceful simplicity, a happy mixture of elevation and naïveté