It is evident that Tissot was not only the physician to all these great people; they were proud to own him as a friend. And since most of his friends and patients were rich his rivals charged him with being a charlatan and occupied only in making money. He did make money, and some of his titled patients sent him splendid presents.
Among the most interesting of M. Tissot’s fair consultants was the lively and piquante Madame de Genlis who arrived at Lausanne with her father-in-law. She spent nearly a fortnight under his care, but the fêtes, the balls, the concerts at which she displayed her charming voice, and played the harp, the sails on the lake, the trips across to La Meillerie, and a multitude of other dissipations might well have undone all the doctor’s prescriptions. But they were for her mother not for her. Madame de Genlis had long sworn by his medical book. She tells in her memoirs how she practised, in an amateur way, on or among the villagers. M. Racine, the barber, always came to consult with her whenever any one was ill.
“We went together to visit them,” she says. “My prescriptions were confined to simple teas and broths which I usually sent from the château. I was at least instrumental in moderating the zeal of M. Racine for the emetics which he prescribed for almost every ill. I had perfected myself in the art of bleeding; the peasants often came and asked me to bleed them which I did; but as it was known that I always gave them from twenty-four to thirty sous after a bleeding, I soon had a great number of patients and I suspected that they were attracted by the thirty sous.”
She gives an entertaining account of her arrival at Lausanne, where, as she was sitting in her carriage, wearily waiting for her servant to find lodgings, the young Prince of Holstein recognized her and introduced her to Madame de Crousaz, the authoress, who procured for her at the house of her father-in-law, M. de Crousaz, “charming rooms with an enchanting view of the Lake of Geneva.”
[CHAPTER XVIII]
TO CHAMONIX
WHILE I was reading about Madame de Genlis after breakfast one morning, Ruth came into the library and we talked about the advantage of foreign travel. Does the broadening effect come from seeing new scenes or does it proceed from the intercourse which it favours with men and women of entirely different habits and modes of thought?
I said that my belief was that a person living in an isolated country town, by reading books of travel, especially those furnished with illustrations, and by attending “moving-picture shows,” might attain to as complete a knowledge of any given foreign country as he would by merely travelling through it armed with a Baedecker. The generality of travellers carry with them the individual aura of their own conceit which is quite impermeable to new ideas, and what they have seen does not soak into their inner consciousness at all. But for the average person, if there be such a person, stay-at-home travel is more advantageous than actual peregrinations. Rushing from one country to another or from one place to another is not seeing a country.