At length the rosy-cheeked wife of the physician flourished into the apartment,—as preparatory course or preamble of the dinner,—with three or four esprits or feathers in her cap,—with a dapple neck-apron,—in a red ball-dress, from which waltzing had taken out the color in which she had rouged,—and with a perforated fancy-fan. If I wished, I could be interested in her; for, touching these esprits (since the esprit, like the brain in Embrya, often sets itself upon the brain-pan, and there suns itself), she thought women and partridges were best served up at table with feathers on their heads; touching the fan, she meant to have it understood she had just come from a morning call (whereby she very clearly implied that ladies could no more go through the streets without their fan-stick than joiners without their rule); touching the rest, she knew the guest was a Count. Accordingly, it appears that she belongs to the honorables, who (for the most part), like rattlesnakes, are never better to be enjoyed than when one has previously put the head out of the way; but that we have still time enough to believe, when we come to understand her better.
The beautiful Zesara was for her blind, deaf, dumb, destitute of smell, taste, feeling; but there are many women whom one cannot, with the greatest pains and tediousness, displease; Schoppe could do it more easily. Sphex, for his own personal predilections, made more out of a cell of fat in Malt than out of the whole cellular texture of a lady, even of his own; like all business people, he held women to be veritable angels, whom God had sent for the ministration of the saints (the business men).
The dinner course began. Augusti, a delicate eater, enjoyed much, and took not only to the fine service, but to the torn napkins; the like of which he had often had in his lap at court, because there, in morals and in linen, rents are preferred to plasters. Soon, as usual, came forth even the outposts and first skirmishes of miserable dishes, the common prophets and forerunners of the best tit-bits, although at a hundred tables I have cursed them, that they did not, like good monthly magazines, give the best pieces first, and the most meagre last. The Doctor had already said to the three boys,—"Galen, Boerhave, Van Swieten, what is the polite way of sitting?" and the three physicians had already shoved three right hands between the waistcoat buttons, and three left hands into the waistcoat pockets, and sat waiting, "bolt upright" when good chap-sager was brought in for the dessert. Sphex partly expressed pleasure in cheese, partly a horror of it, just as he found it in the way of his shop-business. He remarked, on one hand, how joiners, in their glue-pot, had no better glue than what stood here before them,—it had just that binding quality in a man,—yet he would rather, for his own individual self, with Dr. Junker, apply it externally, like arsenic; but he also confessed, on the other hand, that the chap-sager for the Lector was poison. "I would pledge myself for it," said he, "that you, if one could examine you, would be found hectic! the long fingers and the long neck speak in my favor, and particularly are white teeth, according to Camper, a bad sign. Persons, on the contrary, who have a set of teeth like my lady there may feel safe."
Augusti smiled, and merely asked the Doctor's lady, at what time one could best gain access to the Minister.
Such poisonous reflections, as well as cats'-dinners,[57] he gave out, not from satirical malice, but from mere indifference to others, whom, like an honest man, he never suffered in the least to sway him in his actions. With the liberty-cap of the doctor's hat on his head, he received, from his medical indispensableness, so many academic freedoms, that he, between his four house-walls, ate and acted not more freely than between the showy, bristling pale-work of the court. Did he ever there—I ask that—let a drop of sweet wine pass his lips without previously drawing out an Ephraimite, which did not itself outlive the probation-day, and hanging it in the glass, merely to prove before the court whether the Ephraimite therein did not grow black? And if the silver did so, was there not as good as a demonstration of the wine being oversmoked, and could not the physician have applied the whole right neatly, court, sweetness, blackening, poisoning, and oversmoking, if he had been the man to do it?
The Lector's accidentally inquiring about the time of seeing the Minister was what Albano had to thank for saving him from first learning the painful misfortune in the house of the Minister, or in the presence of the blind girl herself. "You can," answered Sara, the Doctoress, "also despatch the servant; he will subscribe for you all; I, however, pity none as I do the daughter." Now broke loose a storm of questions about the unknown accident. "It is so," began the physician, sulkily; but soon (because he saw in some eyes water for his mill, and because he sought to roll off all medical blame from himself upon Captain Roquairol) he set himself as well as he could to pathetic detail, and lied almost like a sentimentalist. With an unobserved hint to the affected lady, he pushed an empty dish towards her as a lachrymatory, in order that nothing might be lost. From the eclipsed eyes of the vainly struggling youth, this first woe of his life snatched some great drops. "May recovery be possible?" asked Augusti, exceedingly troubled, on account of his connection with the family.
"Certainly; it is a mere affection of the nerves," replied Schoppe, briskly, "and nothing more." Whytt relates, that a lady who had too much acid in her stomach (in the heart it were still worse) saw everything in a cloud, as girls do at the approach of sick-headache. Sphex, who had lied only for the sake of pathos and alkali, and who was vexed that the Librarian should have been of his private opinion, answered just as if the latter had not spoken at all. "The highest degree of consumption, Mr. Lector, often winds up with blindness, and it were well, in this case, to prescribe for both. Meanwhile I am acquainted with a certain periodical nervous blindness. I had the case in a lady[58] whom I brought out of it merely by blood-letting, smoke of burnt coffee, and the evening fog from the water; this we are now trying again in the case of our nervous patient. A dutiful physician will, however, always wish the devil would take mother and brother."
In other words, the return of Liana's periodical malady almost distracted him. Offences against his honor, his love, his sympathy, never wrought the Physicus into a heat; through all such he kept on his glazed frost surtout; but disturbances of his cures heated him even to the degree of flying to pieces; and so are we all a kind of Prince-Rupert's-drops, which can bear the hammer and never break, till one just breaks off the little thread point, and they fly into a thousand splinters; with Achilles, it was the heel, with Sphex, the medical D.'s ring-finger, with me, the writing-finger. The Doctor now shook out the contents of his heart, as some call their gall-bladder; he swore by all the devils he had done more for her than any and every physician,—he had, however, already foreseen that such a stupid education—merely to look well and pray and read and sing—would prove a cursed poor economy,—he had often longed to break the harmonica-bells and tambour-needles,[59]—he had often called the attention of the mother, with sufficient distinctness and without indulgence, to Liana's so-called charms, and to her sensibility, her bright redness of cheeks, and velvet-soft skin; but had seemed to himself, by so doing, almost to gratify more than to distress her. The only thing that delighted him was, that the maiden had, some years before, caught a deadly sickness from the first holy sacrament, from which he had tried to keep her away, because he had already experienced, in the case of a fourth patient, the most melancholy consequences from this holy act.
To the astonishment of every one my Count took part against all with Roquairol. Ah, thy first spring-storms were even now whirling round imprisoned in thy bosom, without a friendly hand to give them an outlet, and thou wouldst cover thy bloody grief! And wast thou not seeking a spirit full of flames, and eyes full of flames for thine own, and wouldst thou not rather have entered into brotherhood with a thundering hell-god than with an insipid pietistical saint, forever gnawing like a moth? Sharply he asks the Doctor, "What have you done with the Prince's heart?" "I have it not," said Sphex, startled; "it lies in Tartarus,[60] although it would have been more profitable to science had one been permitted to put it among one's preparations; it was large and very singular." He was thinking how often—when he could—he had, as an augur, during the dissection, secretly slipped aside one or another important member—as a princely or a cavalier-robber, à la minutta—for his study,—a honey-bag which he gladly cut out for himself with his anatomical honey-knife.
"Has the young lady, then, an unhappy passion, or anything of the sort?" inquired Schoppe. "More than one," said Sphex; "cripples, idiots, young orphans, blind Methusalems,—all these passions she has. Sports and young gentlemen, I often say to the old lady, would be better for her health."