“That is true; I see that you have tact.—Well, go on, I am listening.”
“So then, it was by flattering men’s passions that I found a way to live at my ease; moreover, I instructed myself in botany, medicine, chemistry, and even in anatomy too; and with my knowledge I have not only composed remedies for all diseases but also philters to arouse love, hatred, jealousy, and to make well people sick; it is in this last art that I am particularly proficient.”
“Ah! I understand now. No doubt you sell vulneraries too, like that tall, red man that I used to see in Paris on the squares and street-corners. People called him a charlatan, I believe.”
At the name charlatan, my companion leaped in the saddle in such a way that he nearly threw us both off; luckily I clung firmly to him, and we got off with merely a fright.
“My dear boy,” he said when he had become a little calmer, “I forgive you the name of charlatan. You don’t know me yet; indeed I admit that there is a little charlatanism in my business, and that three-quarters of my remedies and my philters do not produce the effect that is expected of them; but we make mistakes in medicine as we do in everything else. We take cathartics and make ourselves sick; we have a toothache, and we take an elixir which spoils all our teeth; we try to obtain a position which we are not able to fill; we go into maritime speculations which a sudden storm destroys; we think that we have intelligence when we have not the intelligence to succeed, which is the most important of all; we determine to be prudent and we make fools of ourselves; we desire happiness, and we marry and have a wife and children who often cause us untold anxiety!—In short, my little man, people have made mistakes in all lines, and it is great luck when things turn out as we had anticipated, or hoped.”
“Look here, monsieur,” I said to my little hunchback, whose chatter was beginning to weary me, “what do you expect to do with me, after all is said and done?”
“This: when I stop in a village or small town, I cannot make myself sufficiently well known alone; I need an assistant, to go about the town to deliver prospectuses, and to answer for me when I am busy, and make a memorandum of the questions that people want to ask me.”
“But I don’t choose to be your assistant, as I don’t want to learn anything.”
“I understand that very well, my friend. Oh! I don’t propose to drive you crazy with fatiguing work. I will have you make pills, that’s all.”
“Pills?”