"You know him, then?" I broke in.
"Know him?—oh, for many years. He is the great Doctor Barsac. He smashes everything he doesn't like. He smashed that old fat monsieur who made so much laugh. His name is Mariguy. He looks like a curé, does he not? But he is not a curé; he is an advocate. Barsac is from Basle, but Mariguy lives in Paris. Those two are never separated; they love each other like a man and a wife. There is a great medical convention here in Zurich, and Barsac has brought Mariguy with him to show him off. He put a new silver stomach in Mariguy last winter and is very proud of it. It is the great operation of the year, they say."
"What happened to the fat man, Joseph—was it an accident?"
"No—a duel. Barsac ran him through the belly with his sword."
"Permit me, my Lord—" And Joseph stepped to the window. "Yes, there comes the lame Englishman home from the drive. Excuse me—I will go and help him from his carriage." And Joseph bowed himself out backward.
* * * * * * *
II
Joseph's departure left my mind in an unsettled state. I hadn't the slightest interest in the great surgeon who had made the cure of the year, nor in the stout advocate with his nickel-plated digestive apparatus. Both of them might have broken every mirror in the hotel and have thrown the fragments out of the window, and the manager after them, without raising my pulse a beat. Neither did the medical convention nor the doctor's exhibit cause me a moment's thought. Such things were commonplace and of every-day occurrence. Only the dramatic in life appeals to so staid and gray an old painter as myself, and even Joseph's picturesque imagination could not imbue either one of the incidents of the morning with that desirable quality.
What really did appeal to me as I conjured up in my mind the picture of the fat man sprawled over the sofa-cushions roaring with laughter was the duel and the causes that led up to it. Why, if the man was his friend, had the doctor selected the hilarious advocate as an antagonist, and what could have induced the surgeon to pick out that particular section of his friend's surface in which to insert his sword.