[CHAPTER XXVII]
Porporina, according to the benevolent language of the Invisibles, having no longer any reason to be seriously uneasy about the Chevalier, and thinking that Matteus had not seen very clearly into the affair, felt, when she left the mysterious council chamber, greatly relieved. All that had been said to her floated in her imagination like rays behind a cloud, and anxiety and her will no longer sustaining her, she soon experienced great feebleness in walking. She felt extremely faint and hungry, and the impenetrable hood stifled her. She paused frequently, and was forced to take the arm of her guides in order to reach her room. She sank from debility, and a few minutes after felt revived by a flagon which was offered her, and by the air which circulated freely through the room. Then she observed that her guides had gone in haste, that Matteus was preparing to serve a most tempting supper, and that the little masked doctor, who had put her in a lethargic sleep when she was brought hither, was feeling her pulse and attending to her. She easily recognised him by his wig, and she was certain she had heard his voice, before, though she could not say where.
"Doctor," said she, with a smile, "I think the best thing you can do is to give me supper soon. Nothing but hunger ails me. But I beg you on this occasion to omit the coffee you prepare so well. I am afraid I am not able to bear it now."
"The coffee I prepare," said the doctor, "is an admirable anodyne. Be calm, countess; my prescription is not of that character. Will you now confide in me, and suffer me to sup with you. It is the pleasure of his highness that I do not leave you until you be completely restored, and I think in half an hour refreshment will have done so."
"If such be his highness's pleasure, and your own, doctor, I will have the honor of your company to supper," said Consuelo, suffering Matteus to roll her arm-chair up to the table.
"My company will not be useless," said the doctor, beginning to demolish a superb pheasant, and carving it in an expert manner.
"Were I not here, you would indulge the extreme hunger which follows a long fast, and might injure yourself. I who apprehend no such inconvenience to result to myself, will put the pheasant on my plate, giving you the nice pieces."
The voice of the gastronomical doctor attracted Consuelo's attention, in spite of herself. Great was her surprise, when taking off his mask, he placed it on the table, saying—"Away with this piece of puerility, which keeps me from breathing, and enjoying what I eat." Consuelo shrank back when she recalled, in the bon vivant doctor, the one whom she had seen at her bed-side—Supperville, the physician of the Margravine of Bareith. She had subsequently seen him at a distance at Berlin, without having courage to approach or speak to him. At that time the contrast of his gluttonous appetite, with the emotion and distress she experienced, recalled to her the dryness of his ideas and conversation, amid the consternation and grief of all the family, and she could scarcely restrain her disgust. Supperville, absorbed by the perfume of the pheasant, appeared to pay no attention to her trouble.
Matteus completed the ridiculousness of the situation, by placing himself, with a quick exclamation, before the doctor. The circumspect servant for five minutes had waited on the table without seeing that his face was bare, and it was only when he took the mask for the cover of the paté, that he cried out, with terror: "Mercy, doctor! you have let your mask fall on the table!"