"No, sir; doctors are paid, that's all, and people cure themselves."
"You persist, then, in saying that I am not even to take my head cook with me?"
"On no account whatever."
"Then I am defunct already."
"That you will be so, sir, in two months, if you remain here, there cannot be a doubt."
"Then, good heavens! where can I go? What am I to do without carriages, without opera nightingales, and, above all things, without a head cook?"
The night succeeding the consultation, the banker felt as if twenty cork-screws had been driven into his calves, and he made, ere dawn, a vow that he would leave the capital. This determination taken, the next point to be decided was in what direction to go,—for it was not a journey of pleasure he was about to take, but one of health; and for once his riches were of no further use to him than to provide the means of transit. His physicians, fashionable men, strange to say, were sincere, and did not order him to Nice or Lucca, hot-baths, or mineral waters, or even to the orange-groves of Hyères, to which, when a rich man cannot recover, they send him, in order that he may die comfortably under Nature's warm blanket, the sun, inhaling with his last inspirations the delicious scent of her flowers. To Spain, where, said the invalid, they talk so loud and drink water, he would not go; nor to Germany, the land of meerschaums and sour crout. Which direction therefore was he to take? to which point of the compass was he to turn the vessel's prow?
Several times did the unhappy banker pass his geography in review, but his knowledge of this science was indeed finite, and the Landes, Picardy, and such like spots, alone presented themselves to his imagination. In this predicament the light of friendship suddenly threw a ray over his thinking faculties; he remembered my father, the companion of his boyhood, with whom he had been brought up,—his great friend, without doubt, but of whom he had not thought for the last ten years.
"By all the blue devils that dance in my brain!" said the unhappy millionnaire, starting up on his bed of pain, as if he had a spring in his back, and throwing at the nose of his astonished apothecary, who was watching him, the draught presented to him,—"by the wig of my respected grandfather,—by the beard of Æsculapius, I have found the real friend who will pour over my head the oil of health."