The doctor gravely replied: "Oh! not at all, my dear friend. We must not confound exercise and fatigue. The movement of the man who is turning the wheel is injurious, while the movement of the walker or the rider is beneficial."
But Paul noticed a lady's saddle.
"Yes," said the physician; "the evening is reserved for the other sex. The men are no longer admitted after twelve o'clock. Come, then, and look at the dry swimming."
A system of movable little boards screwed together at their ends and at their centers, stretched out in lozenge-shape or closing into squares, like that children's game which carries along soldiers who are spurred on, permitted three swimmers to be garroted and mangled at the same time.
The doctor said: "I need not extol to you the benefits of dry swimming, which does not moisten the body except by perspiration, and consequently does not expose our imaginary bather to any danger of rheumatism."
But a waiter, with a card in his hand, came to look for the doctor.
"The Duc de Ramas, my dear friend. I must leave you. Excuse me."
Paul, left there alone, turned round. The two cavaliers were trotting afresh. M. Aubry-Pasteur was walking still; and the three natives of Auvergne, with their arms all but broken and their backs cracking with thus shaking the patients on whom they were operating, were quite out of breath. They looked as if they were grinding coffee.
When he had reached the open air, Bretigny saw Doctor Honorat watching, along with his wife, the preparations for the fête. They began to chat, gazing at the flags which crowned the hill with a kind of halo.
"Is it at the church the procession is to be formed?" the physician asked his wife.