"And yet it is perhaps a greater danger for you."
Roland, who was on the point of drinking, set his full glass down on the table again, and asked:
"Why?"
He had for some time been complaining of his health, of heaviness, giddiness, frequent and unaccountable discomfort. The doctor replied:
"Because the bullet might very possibly miss you, while the glass of wine is dead certain to hit you in the stomach."
"And what then?"
"Then it scorches your inside, upsets your nervous system, makes the circulation sluggish, and leads the way to the apoplectic fit which always threatens a man of your build."
The jeweler's incipient intoxication had vanished like smoke before the wind. He looked at his son with fixed, uneasy eyes, trying to discover whether he was making game of him.
But Beausire exclaimed:
"Oh, these confounded doctors! They all sing the same tune; eat nothing, drink nothing, never make love or enjoy yourself; it all plays the devil with your precious health. Well, all I can say is I have done all these things, sir, in every quarter of the globe, wherever and as often as I have had the chance, and I am none the worse."