Monsieur Levy was not always "a good patient." When I first approached him, he implored me not to touch him "at any price."
I disregarded these injunctions, and did what was necessary. Throughout the process, Monsieur Levy was snoring, be it said. But he woke up at last, uttered one or two piercing cries, and stigmatised me as a "brute." All right.
Then I showed him the big pieces of cast-iron I had removed from his back and his buttock respectively. Monsieur Levy's eyes at once filled with tears; he murmured a few feeling words about his family, and then pressed my hands warmly: "Thank you, thank you, dear Doctor."
Since then, Monsieur Levy has suffered a good deal, I must admit. There are the plugs! And those abominable india-rubber tubes we push into the wounds! Monsieur Levy, kneeling and prostrating himself, his head in his bolster, suffered every day and for several days without stoicism or resignation. I was called an "assassin" and also on several occasions, a "brute." All right.
However, as I was determined that Monsieur Levy should get well, I renewed the plugs, and looked sharply after the famous india-rubber tubes.
The time came when my hands were warmly pressed and my patient said: "Thank you, thank you, dear Doctor," every day.
At last Monsieur Levy ceased to suffer, and confined himself to the peevish murmurs of a spoilt beauty or a child that has been scolded. But now no one takes him seriously. He has become the delight of the ward; he laughs so heartily when the dressing is over, he is naturally so gay and playful, that I am rather at a loss as to the proper expression to assume when, alluding to the past, he says, with a look in which good nature, pride, simplicity, and a large proportion of playful malice are mingled:
"I suffered so much! so much!"
XIX
He was no grave, handsome Arab, looking as if he had stepped from the pages of the "Arabian Nights," but a kind of little brown monster with an overhanging forehead and ugly, scanty hair.