"Ou! Monsieur le Docteur!" she screamed, jumping at Traverse in a way to make him start back; "Ou, Monsieur le Docteur, I am very happy you to see! Voilà mon frère! Behold my brother! He is ill! He is verra ill! He is dead! He is verra dead!"
"I hope not," said Traverse, approaching the bed.
"Voilà, behold! Mon dieu, he is verra still! He is verra cold! He is verra dead! What can you, mon frère, my brother to save?"
"Be composed, madam, if you please, and allow me to examine my patient," said Traverse.
"Ma foi! I know not what you speak 'compose.' What can you my brother to save?"
"Much, I hope, madam, but you must leave me to examine my patient and not interrupt me," said Traverse, passing his hand over the naked chest of the sick man.
"Mon Dieu! I know not 'exam' and 'interrupt'! and I know not what can you mon frère to save!"
"If you don't hush parley-vooing, the doctor can do nothink, mum," said the waiter, in a respectful tone.
Traverse found his patient in a bad condition—in a stupor, if not in a state of positive insensibility. The surface of his body was cold as ice, and apparently without the least vitality. If he was not, as his sister had expressed it, "very dead," he was certainly "next to it."
By close questioning, and by putting his questions in various forms, the doctor learned from the chattering little magpie of a Frenchwoman that the patient had been ill for nine days; that he had been under the care of Monsieur le Doctor Cartiere; that there had been a consultation of physicians; that they had prescribed for him and given him over: that le Docteur Cartiere still attended him, but was at this instant in attendance as accoucheur to a lady in extreme danger, whom he could not leave; but Doctor Cartiere had directed them, in his unavoidable absence, to call in the skilful, the talented, the soon to be illustrious young Docteur Rocque, who was also near at hand.