“He had traveled for his knowledge; he had fought with death from the Nile to the Ganges, and could swear that the sharks and crocodiles owed him a grudge throughout the world. He had cured rajahs and satraps till he made himself unpopular in every court where men looked for vacancies; had kept rich old men out of their graves until there was a general conspiracy of heirs to drive him out of the country; and had poured life into so many dying husbands that the women made a universal combination against his own.”
This flow of panegyric, however, did not impede his present services. He applied his herbs and bandages with professional dexterity, and kindling a fire, prepared some food, which went further to cheer the patient than even his medicine. He still talked away like one to whom words were a necessary escape for his surcharge of animal spirits.
The Leech’s Skill
“He knew everything in physic. He had studied in Egypt, and could compound the true essential extract of mummy with any man that wore a beard, from the Cataracts to the bottom of the Delta. He once walked to the Mountains of the Moon to learn the secret of powdered chrysolite. On the Himalaya he picked up his knowledge of the bezoar, and a year’s march through sands and snows rewarded him at once with a bag of the ginseng, most marvelous of roots, and the sight of the wall of China, most endless of walls.”
How he stooped to veil this accumulation of knowledge in rags, he did not condescend to explain. But his skill, so far, was certainly admirable, and my brave Constantius recovered with a suddenness that surprised me. With his strength his hopes returned.
“Oh,” exclaimed he, waking from a refreshing sleep, “that I were once again at the foot of the rampart with the ladder in my hand!”
“By my father’s beard,” replied the leech, “you are much better where you are; for observe, tho I can go further than any doctor between the four rivers, yet I never professed to cure the dead. Take Masada by scale! Ha! ha! take the clouds by scale! You would have found three walls within the one to which they decoyed you. Herod was the prince of builders, and could have so built as to have kept out everything, except the champion that carries no arms but a scythe.”
“Then you know Masada?” interrupted I eagerly.
“Know it, yes; every loophole, window, door—aye, and dungeon—from one end of it to the other.”