“Oh! you don’t understand; when I say remedies, I mean medicines to take——”
“Yes, with a syringe; I know all about that!”
“I tell you that you don’t know what I am talking about. You will talk while pretending to be asleep; I will teach you your lesson beforehand, and you will answer the questions asked by invalids or curiosity seekers.”
“Well, I don’t understand at all.”
“Pardieu! I can believe that; nor do those people who question the somnambulists; and that is just wherein the charm of it lies; if they knew what to think about it, it would no longer be possible to earn one’s living with magnetism and somnambulism. But will you be my assistant and help me with my business, or not? I will feed you well, I will dress you suitably, and you will see the country, for I never stay long in the same place.”
“And all I shall have to do for that is to make pills and sleep?”
“Not another thing!”
“Then, it’s agreed, I will go with you.”
So I became the little hunchback’s assistant. We reached a village that night. My patron went to the best inn, and ordered a very good supper. It seemed to me very pleasant to travel on horseback, without having to worry about my meals. Moreover, I was always at liberty to leave my companion when I chose, and that reason was enough to make me enjoy myself with him; the certainty of being free gives a charm to existence and makes the most trivial incidents enjoyable; bondage, on the contrary, throws a tinge of gloom over all our actions; it causes us to shun pleasure; it takes away all the joy of love, it deprives the heart of all its strength and the imagination of all its vivacity.
This that I am saying, Sans-Souci, is not my own; it is a sentence which my godfather repeated to me often, and which I remembered easily because it harmonized with my taste.