"Thus was he ever," remarked Vila. "I thought he would become more reasonable, and learn to think a little of himself. He was always too devout."
"Devout!" exclaimed the wife: "ah heavens! your honour, we now come in earnest to the foul spot. No, Monsieur Vila, religion, or what people so call christianity, he is utterly deficient in."
"How then has he thus fallen into error?" asked the old man.
"The Lord knows best," answered she, "who has created him so confused. He will ruin himself yet with his curing. Look you, it is not alone his companions of the faith, the Catholic Christians that he succours without remuneration, if they only give him the least hint of poverty; nay also--God be with us--the Huguenots and even the Camisards he attends, as one of us, if he can find an opportunity. The wounded whom they ought to have taken off to Florac swarmed here; look you, the God-forgetting man quartered, healed and fed them and occupied himself so much with them, that they were able afterwards to run off in health, and I will not answer for it, that he did not also give them money and the worth of money to take with them on the road. No, not a spark of true genuine faith and of proper christianity is in the man."
"He is probably a sort of Samaritan," said Vila affected.
"You are right, good sir," continued Barbara, "Samariter, or Samoid, and if he only does not turn out an anibaptist in his old days. Would you believe it, six weeks ago, when they gave up so many of those poor sinners to justice at Florac, thither did he run the first, and bound up the wounds of the sick and set their broken limbs. Husband, said I, they will certainly be put to the wheel, and hanged, there is nothing more to heal in them. Then said the simple fellow, God or nature had taken so much pains to suffer their joints, bones, muscles, and I know not what else to grow, that one is obliged out of charity to spare and take care of them as long as they will last. Look you, he has such enthusiasm stuff in his head that, as the saying is, he is Jack in every corner, where there is only any thing to doctor, should it even be the greatest criminal, there he is."
"I shall read him a sermon on that point," said Vila.
"That's right!" cried she joyfully, "scold him a skin full, for he always says, that I am too stupid; and my persuasions tend to nothing." The woman had got up several times to look at the little bed. "Perhaps, you have a sick child there?" asked the doctor.--"Child!" answered she somewhat mockingly! "quite otherwise! only look at the present!"--when she removed the cushion, there lay a cur dog with bandaged paws.--"The history," commenced the narrator, "correcterises exactly the simple man. The people about here often make him their laughing stock, because he is such a good-humoured, easy fellow; and so the smith at length gave him his dog to doctor, having in a passion broken its hind-paws in two with a hammer. My Godfred wrapped up the dog and dragged it home to me, bound up its wounds himself, laid him down, raised him up, suffered him not to run about, bound the cushion tight over him, made him a kind of maskinnery for his legs, because he said the dog would not be taken proper care of at home, and that he must have it under his own eyes. Well, my good smith's dog became healthy again, and went off without saying good day, or by your leave. That may be about two months ago; last week, towards evening, something came scratching at our room door; come in! no one opened; but the scraping and scratching continued: so my Godfred opened the door and looked out, in springs our old smith's dog like a fool and behind him came hobling the diseased thing, the cur there with a broken leg dragging behind him, and the smith's dog danced and sprang round my husband, as if to beg, and thus supplicated him that he would also doctor his comrade. In my rage, I seized the botanix stick from my old man to cudgel the curs out of the room. But he, as if affected, said, 'Never could I have imagined so much understanding and gratitude in a dog,' and immediately took him in his arms, examined his foot, bandaged it, and busied himself about the animal. Gratitude! cried I, you call it thus, if the bull dog recommenders you to the cur which will afterwards spread the story about among all the dogs in the country, so that finally with all the fame of dog-pratix, you will no longer be able to stand, or walk? But all in vain! there is the beast, and I must attend to it, when the old fool is not at home."
The husband now returned, his arm full of herbs, which he immediately carried into a closet; he then saluted his guests quietly and affably, and before he sat down he looked after his four-legged patient, which in gratitude licked his hands, and looked fondly in his face. With the greatest composure and as if there was nothing remarkable in it, he rebandaged the foot, placed the invalid again in its bed, which he also bound fast, then pressed its head down on the cushion, as if to intimate that it must now go to sleep. The dog seemed also to understand him, for he only blinked a few times up at his benefactor, and then resigned himself to sleep.
"Your wife here," commenced the doctor, "complains of you, that you do not think enough of your own concerns, you cure every body, even dogs and cats, and receive nothing for it, for this dog as little as for the former; have they not paid your bills yet?"