"Good or wicked, drunk or sober, it has nothing to do with present matters; I am not a magistrate, my good woman; I only wish to establish a fact. You have been knocked down and trampled upon, have you not?"
"Alas! yes, sir," said Jeanne, bursting into tears; "and yet I have never given him cause for complaint. I work as much as I can, and I—"
"The epigastrium must be painful? you must feel a great heat there?" said the doctor, interrupting Jeanne; "you must experience lassitude, uneasiness, nausea?"
"Yes, sir. I only came here at the last extremity, otherwise I would not have abandoned my children, for whom I am so much worried; and then Catharine—ah! it is on her account I fear the most. If you knew—"
"Your tongue!" said the doctor, again interrupting the patient.
This order appeared so strange to Jeanne, who had thought to excite feelings of compassion in the doctor, that she did not at first comply with it, but looked at him with amazement.
"Let us see this tongue, of which you make so good use," said the doctor, smiling; then he held down, with the end of his finger, her under jaw.
After causing the students to examine the tongue closely, in order to ascertain its color and dryness, the doctor stepped back a moment. Jeanne, overcoming her fear, cried in a trembling voice:
"Sir, I am going to tell you. Some neighbors, as poor as myself, have been kind enough to take charge of my Children, but for eight days only. That is a great deal. At the end of this time I must return home. Thus, I entreat you, for the love of heaven! cure me as soon as possible—or almost cure me, so that I can get up and work. I have only a week before me, for—"
"Face discolored—state of prostration complete; yet the pulse hard, strong, and frequent," said the imperturbable doctor, looking at Jeanne. "Remark it well, gentlemen: oppression—heat at the epigastrium, all these symptoms certainly announce hematemesis, probably complicated with hepatitis, caused by domestic sorrows, as the yellowish coloration of the globe of the eye indicates; the subject has received violent blows in the regions of epigastrium and abdomen; the vomiting of blood is necessarily caused by some organic lesion of certain viscera. On this subject I will call your attention to a very curious point—very curious. The post-mortem examinations of those who die with the complaint of which this subject is attacked, offer results singularly variable; often the malady, very acute and very serious, carries off the patient in a few days, and leaves no traces of its existence; at other times, the spleen, the liver, the pancreas, present lesions more or less serious. It is probable that the subject before us has suffered some of these lesions; we are going, then, to try to assure ourselves of this fact, and you—you will also assure yourselves by an attentive examination of the patient." And, with a rapid movement, Dr. Griffon, throwing the bed-clothes back, almost entirely uncovered Jeanne. It is repugnant to our feelings to depict the piteous struggles of this poor creature, who wept bitterly from shame, imploring the doctor and his auditory to leave her.