But the anger and exasperation of the Doctor are not to be imagined when he saw the whole village gathered about the door, Jean-Claude Wachtmann at the head, Hubert the blacksmith on his right, and Christian Bauer on his left. His venerable face turned suddenly red, and his habitually calm and meditative eyes shot forth the lightnings of a noble indignation.
He mounted abruptly into the saddle, crying—
“Make way!”
But the crowd did not stir, and Maître Frantz even thought he could perceive a mocking smile on all their lips, as if defying him to go.
“Come, my friends, make way for me,” he said, in a less decided tone; “I am going to see my patients in the mountain.”
This falsehood, so contrary to his system, pained him; yet the peasants, who knew his goodness, took no heed of it.
“We know all,” cried fat Catherine, pretending to shed tears in her apron, “we know all! Martha has told us all—you want to leave the village.”
Mathéus was going to reply, when Jean-Claude Wachtmann, with a single wave of his hand, imposed silence on everybody; he then planted himself in front of the Doctor to overpower him by his looks, majestically drew forth his spectacles from their case, pressed them down upon his big nose, smoothed out his paper with a grave air, once more looked around him to command the attention of the crowd, and began to read the following masterpiece in a solemn tone, pausing at the commas and full-stops, and gesticulating like a very preacher:—
“When the great Antiochus, Emperor of Nineveh and Babylon, formed the ambitious design of departing from his kingdom to make the conquest of the five quarters of the world, with the guilty view of covering himself with laurels, his friend Cineas said to him: ‘Great Antiochus, worthy scion of so many kings, Emperor of Babylon, of Nineveh, and of Mesopotamia, a country situate between the Tigris and the Euphrates—magnanimous and invincible warrior! deign to lend an ear to the touching words of your friend Cineas, a man of intelligence, who prostrates himself before you, and who can give you none but the best advice. What is glory, Antiochus?—what is glory? An empty smoke, like a dense shadow that has not the least body to support it. Glory!—the scourge of humanity, bearing with it plague, war, famine, shame and desolation! What! illustrious Antiochus, would you abandon your wife, an august queen full of virtues, and your poor children, who wring their hands and cover themselves with ashes? What! can you have a soul so hardened and perverse as to plunge into an abyss of desolation this people that adores you, these nubile women, these mature men, these infants at the breast, and these old men with locks white as the snow of Mount Ida, of whom you are as it were the father! You hear their cries—their tears—their——’”
He could not proceed any further; the crowd, as with one assent, suddenly burst into tears; the women sobbed, the men sighed, the children squalled, and the whole house was filled with lamentations.