"Ay de mi! ay de mi!" he groaned; "'tis a very vile draught, cousin, a very villainous concoction. Must I discomfit my inwards with the whole bottle?"
"Thrice a day, señor, you must take your dose," I said.
"Permit me at least to qualify the savour of it: it is so exceeding nasty and rough upon the tongue," he said pleadingly.
"One sole glass of sherris," said I, with a great show of reluctancy; "no more, or the merits of this most potent medicine will be utterly quelled."
He drank the wine with great relish, eyeing the decanter very wistfully as I set it out of his reach. Then calling for a basin, I poured into it a little of the contents of my second vial, and dipping the sponge into the liquid, I delicately anointed his sweating brows, telling him 'twas a sure begetter of sleep tranquil as a child's.
"Your hand is rather that of a swordsman than of a physician, cousin," he said, thereby giving me a wrench in my soul, lest he began to suspect me. But he proceeded: "Yet it is delicate in its touch as a woman's; you give me great comfort, cousin."
I continued to bathe his temples until I had wrought him to a fair placidity; then admonishing him to be punctual in taking his doses of the former admixture, I left him, promising to visit him again on the morrow.
My next concern was to certify myself that Raoul was still among the galley-slaves, and whether he was of those that remained aboard or of those that were employed ashore. To this end I dispatched Stubbs to the sea-wall in the afternoon, a little before the time when, as he had told me, the day's work was wont to end, there to keep a watch. He returned soon after sunset, and told me that he had seen his whilom comrade among those that were marched into the barracks. I inquired eagerly how he looked, and my heart was very bitter when he replied that my friend was worn to a shadow, with lamentable sunken cheeks and haggard eyes. Nevertheless I rejoiced that he was yet alive, and comforted with this assurance I bent my mind to the working out of the plan I had devised for his deliverance.
On the morrow I went somewhat earlier to see my patient, whom I found wondrously gracious, for that he had slept a good four hours without waking. Indeed, he believed himself to be already cured, and I had much ado to persuade him to take his dose. I showed him that his distemper being of long standing, it was sheer madness to suppose that it could be wholly banished in so short a space of time, and proceeded to expound the necessity of continuing not only in the course he had begun, but also in a subsidiary treatment which I would forthwith explain.
Don Ygnacio, as I have said, was of enormous bulk, and the ills from which he suffered, when they were not merely figments of a disordered imagination, proceeded from too instant a devotion to meat and drink and an over-softness of living. In a word, his greatest need was temperance in these things, together with a more frequent use of his muscles. Accordingly I made him strip to his shirt and stand in his stocking feet in the middle of the room, and then put him through such simple exercises as the Dutch captains use with the common soldiers—extensions of the arms, bending of the trunk, and so forth. It was matter for merriment to see the great hulks, at my urging, make desperate endeavour to touch his toes, and come not within half a yard of accomplishing it. I kept him at these motions, paying no heed to his protestations, for a good half-hour, by the which time I had wrought him to a fine heat and perspiration, so that when finally I permitted him to sink back upon the cushions of his divan he was more wholesomely tired, I warrant, then he had been ever in his life before. While he sat and fanned himself, and quaffed slowly the cup of sherris I allowed for his refreshment, I made him a neat discourse for which I was beholden not to Master Ambrose Parey, but to my own wit. 'Twas sound sense as well as a furtherance of my device.