“You have been prescribing for him then, doctor?” said Arthur, maliciously.
“I have,” said the physician, suffering the hit to pass unnoticed. “No longer ago than yesterday he consulted me for a trifling indisposition, and, in studying his idiosyncrasy, I detected the graver disease. What do you think he called me in for? I ought not to tell these things, but the joke is too good to keep. He was annoyed about the blotches on his face—anxious for a clear complexion. In what strange places vanity finds a corner! Poor fellow! he little thinks how soon the worms will be at work upon his cuticle.”
“You did not tell him, then?” said de Mellay, still doubtful of the doctor’s sincerity, and with a sort of shudder at his dissecting-room style.
“What was the use? The seeds of decay are too deeply set to be eradicated by the resources of art. Although to a non-medical eye he presents little appearance of pulmonary derangement, the malady has already taken firm hold. Probably it is hereditary. It advances slowly but surely, and will not be turned aside. The forms of that terrible disease are many and various, from the pulmonia fulminante of Spain, and the galloping consumption of our island neighbours, to those more tedious varieties whose ravages extend over years, to kill as surely at last. But I do not tell you that I shall not inform M. Fatello of his condition. It is our duty to strive to the last, even when we have no hope but in a miracle. I shall see him to-morrow and break the matter to him.”
“And send him to Italy or Madeira, I suppose,” said Steinfeld, with an appearance of greater interest than he had previously taken in the conversation.
“What for? As well let him die in Paris, where he will at least have all the alleviations the resources of art and high civilisation can afford. But enough of the subject. And you, young gentlemen, say nothing of what I have told you, or you will damage my reputation for discretion.”
The rise of the curtain put a period to the conversation, and, before the act was over, a box-keeper delivered a letter to Dr Pilori, who, after reading it, rose with a certain air of importance and solicitude, and hurried out of the theatre,—his sortie provoking a smile amongst some of the habitual frequenters of the stalls, who were accustomed to see this manœuvre repeated with a frequency that gave it the air of an advertisement. The opera over, Steinfeld and de Mellay left the house together, and, whilst driving along the boulevard, the sentence of death pronounced so positively by Pilori upon Fatello was the subject of their conversation. The viscount was incredulous, took it for a hoax, and would have amused the club by its repetition, and by a burlesque of Pilori’s dogmatical and pompous tone, had not Steinfeld urged him to be silent on the subject, lest he should injure the indiscreet physician. Arthur promised to say nothing about it, and soon forgot the whole affair in the excitement of a bouillotte-table. Steinfeld, equally reserved, neither forgot the doctor’s prophecy, nor doubted the conviction that dictated it. De Mellay’s gossip about the Fatellos had doubtless excited his curiosity, and given him a wish to know them; for, two days afterwards, his elegant coupé drove into the court of their hotel, and a dandified secretary of legation presented, in due form, the Baron Ernest von Steinfeld to the wealthy financier and his handsome wife and sister.