“Not at all,” replied the other:—“my head is (except my purse) the lightest thing I possess at present.”
The disciple of Galen still supposed Sir John was jesting as to his purse, inasmuch as the plum-coloured vis-a-vis, with arms, crests, and mantlings to match—with groom, geldings, and the baronet’s white Arabian, still remained at the Hotel de Wagram, Rue de la Paix.
“Ha! ha! Sir John,” cried he, “I am glad to see you in such spirits.”
Nothing, however, either as to the malady or the fees being fully explained, it at length flashed across the doctor’s comprehension that the baronet might possibly be in downright earnest as to his remittances. Such a thought must, under the circumstances, have a most disheartening effect on the contour of any medical man in Europe. On the first blush of this fatal suspicion the doctor’s features began to droop—his eyebrows descended, and a sort of in utrumque paratus look, that many of my readers must have borne when expecting a money letter, but not quite sure it may not be an apology, overspread his countenance, while his nasal muscles puckering up (as in the tic douloureux), seemed to quaver between a smile and a sardonic grin.
Sir John could scarcely contain himself at the doctor’s ludicrous embarrassment. “By Jove,” said he, “I am serious!”
“Serious! as to what, Sir John?” stammered the physician, getting out of conceit both with his patient and himself.
“The fact,” said Sir John, “is this: your long and indefatigable attention merits all my confidence, and you shall have it.”
“Confidence!” exclaimed the doctor, bowing, “you do me honour; but—”
“Yes, doctor, I now tell you (confidentially) that certain papers and matters called in Ireland custodiums,[[10]] have bothered both me and my brother Joseph, notwithstanding all his exertions for me as agent, receiver, remitter, attorney, banker, auditor, and arranger-general; which said custodiums have given up all my lands, in spite of Joe, to the king, as trustee for a set of horse-jockies, Jews, mortgagees, gamblers, solicitors, and annuity-boys—who have been tearing me to pieces for twenty years past without my having the slightest suspicion of their misdemeanors; and now, doctor, they have finally, by divers law fictions, got his majesty to patronise them.”