The Brotherhood of Consolation Part 22

Happily, G.o.defroid's early arrival saved him the annoyance of being kept waiting. He was, he supposed, the first comer. From a very plain and simple antechamber he pa.s.sed into a large study, where he saw an old man in a dressing-gown smoking a long pipe. The dressing-gown, of black bombazine, shiny with use, dated from the period of the Polish emigration.

"What can I do for you?" said the Jewish doctor, "for I see you are not ill." And he fixed on his visitor a look which had the inquisitive, piercing expression of the eyes of a Polish Jew, eyes which seem to have ears of their own.

Halpersohn was, to G.o.defroid's great astonishment, a man of fifty-six years of age, with small bow-legs, and a broad, powerful chest and shoulders. There was something oriental about the man, and his face in its youth must have been very handsome. The nose was Hebraic, long and curved like a Damascus blade. The forehead, truly Polish, broad and n.o.ble, but creased like a bit of crumpled paper, resembled that given by the old Italian masters to Saint Joseph. The eyes, of a sea-green, and circled, like those of parrots, with a gray and wrinkled membrane, expressed slyness and avarice in an eminent degree. The mouth, gashed into the face like a wound, added to the already sinister expression of the countenance all the sarcasm of distrust.

That pale, thin face, for Halpersohn's whole person was remarkably thin, surmounted by ill-kept gray hair, ended in a long and very thick, black beard, slightly touched with white, which hid fully half the face, so that nothing was really seen of it but the forehead, nose, eyes, cheek-bones, and mouth.

This friend of the revolutionist Lelewel wore a black velvet cap which came to a point on the brow, and took a high light worthy of the touch of Rembrandt.

The question of the physician (who has since become so celebrated, as much for his genius as for his avarice) caused some surprise in G.o.defroid's mind, and he said to himself:--

"I wonder if he takes me for a thief."

The answer to this mental question was on the doctor's table and fireplace. G.o.defroid thought he was the first to arrive; he was really the last. Preceding clients had left large offerings behind them; among them G.o.defroid noticed piles of twenty and forty-franc gold pieces and two notes of a thousand francs each. Could that be the product of one morning? He doubted it, and suspected the Pole of intentional trickery.

Perhaps the grasping but infallible doctor took this method of showing his clients, mostly rich persons, that gold must be dropped into his pouch, and not b.u.t.tons.

Moses Halpersohn was, undoubtedly, largely paid, for he cured, and he cured precisely those desperate diseases which science declares incurable. It is not known in Europe that the Slav races possess many secrets. They have a collection of sovereign remedies, the fruits of their connection with the Chinese, Persians, Cossacks, Turks, and Tartars. Certain peasant women in Poland, who pa.s.s for witches, cure insanity radically with the juice of herbs. A vast body of observation, not codified, exists in Poland on the effects of certain plants, and certain barks of trees reduced to powder, which are transmitted from father to son, and family to family, producing cures that are almost miraculous.

Halpersohn, who for five or six years was called a quack on account of his powders and herb medicines, had the innate science of a great physician. Not only had he studied much and observed much, but he had travelled in every part of Germany, Russia, Persia, and Turkey, whence he had gathered many a traditionary secret; and as he knew chemistry he became a living volume of those wonderful recipes scattered among the wise women, or, as the French call them, the _bonnes femmes_, of every land to which his feet had gone, following his father, a perambulating trader.

It must not be thought that the scene in "The Talisman" where Saladin cures the King of England is a fiction. Halpersohn possesses a silk purse which he steeps in water till the liquid is slightly colored; certain fevers yield immediately when the patient has drunk the prescribed dose of it. The virtue of plants, according to his man, is infinite, and the cure of the worst diseases possible. Nevertheless, he, like the rest of his professional brethren, stops short at certain incomprehensibilities. Halpersohn approved of the invention of h.o.m.oeopathy, more on account of its therapeutics than for its medical system; he was corresponding at this time with Hedenius of Dresden, Chelius of Heidelburg, and the celebrated German doctors, all the while holding his hand closed, though it was full of discoveries. He wished for no pupils.

The frame was in keeping with this embodiment of a Rembrandt picture.

The study, hung with a paper imitating green velvet, was shabbily furnished with a green divan, the cover of which was threadbare. A worn-out green carpet was on the floor. A large armchair of black leather, intended for clients, stood before the window, which was draped with green curtains. A desk chair of Roman shape, made in mahogany and covered with green morocco, was the doctor's own seat.

Between the fireplace and the long table at which he wrote, a common iron safe stood against the wall, and on it was a clock of Viennese granite, surmounted by a group in bronze representing Cupid playing with Death, the present of a great German sculptor whom Halpersohn had doubtless cured. On the mantel-shelf was a vase between two candlesticks, and no other ornament. On either side of the divan were corner-buffets of ebony, holding plates and dishes, and G.o.defroid also noticed upon them two silver bowls, gla.s.s decanters, and napkins.

This simplicity, which amounted almost to bareness struck G.o.defroid, whose quick eye took it all in as he recovered his self-possession.

"Monsieur, I am, as you say, perfectly well myself; I have come on behalf of a woman to whom you were asked to pay a visit some time ago.

She lives on the boulevard du Mont-Parna.s.se."

"Ah! yes; the lady who has sent her son here several times. Well, monsieur, let her come here to me."

"Come here!" repeated G.o.defroid, indignantly. "Monsieur, she cannot even be moved from her bed to a chair; they lift her with pulleys."

"You are not a physician, I suppose?" said the Jewish doctor, with a singular grimace which made his face appear more wicked than it really was.

"If the Baron de Nucingen sent word that he was ill and wanted you to visit him, would you reply, 'Let him come here to me'?"

"I should go to him," said the Jew, coldly, spitting into a Dutch pot made of mahogany and full of sand.

"You would go," said G.o.defroid, gently, "because the Baron de Nucingen has two millions a year, and--"

"The rest has nothing to do with the matter; I should go."

"Well, monsieur, you must go to the lady on the boulevard du Mont-Parna.s.se for the same reason. Without possessing the fortune of the Baron du Nucingen, I am here to tell you that you may yourself put a price upon this lady's cure, or upon your attendance if you fail; I am ready to pay it in advance. But perhaps, monsieur, as you are a Polish refugee and, I believe, a communist, the lady's parentage may induce you to make a sacrifice to Poland. She is the granddaughter of Colonel Tarlowski, the friend of Poniatowski."

"Monsieur, you came here to ask me to cure that lady, and not to give me advice. In Poland I am a Pole; in Paris I am Parisian. Every man does good in his own way; the greed with which I am credited is not without its motive. The wealth I am ama.s.sing has its destination; it is a sacred one. I sell health; the rich can afford to purchase it, and I make them pay. The poor have their doctors. If I had not a purpose in view I would not practise medicine. I live soberly and I spend my time in rushing hither and thither; my natural inclination is to be lazy, and I used to be a gambler. Draw your conclusions, young man. You are too young still to judge old men."

G.o.defroid was silent.

"From what you say," went on the doctor, "the lady in question is the granddaughter of that imbecile who had no courage but that of fighting, and who took part in delivering over his country to Catherine II?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Well, be at her house Monday next at three o'clock," said Halpersohn, taking out a note-book in which he wrote a few words. "You will give me then two hundred francs; and if I promise to cure the patient you will give me three thousand. I am told," he added, "that the lady has shrunk to almost nothing."

"Monsieur, if the most celebrated doctors in Paris are to be believed, it is a neurotic case of so extraordinary a nature that they denied the possibility of its symptoms until they saw them."

"Ah! yes, I remember now what the young lad told me. To-morrow, monsieur."

G.o.defroid withdrew, after bowing to the man who seemed to him as odd as he was extraordinary. Nothing about him indicated a physician, not even the study, in which the most notable object was the iron safe, made by Huret or Fichet.

G.o.defroid had just time to get to the pa.s.sage Vivienne before the shops closed for the day, and there he bought a superb accordion, which he ordered sent at once to Monsieur Bernard, giving the address.

XVI. A LESSON IN CHARITY

From the doctor's house G.o.defroid made his way to the rue Chanoinesse, pa.s.sing along the quai des Augustins, where he hoped to find one of the shops of the commission-publishers open. He was fortunate enough to do so, and had a long talk with a young clerk on books of jurisprudence.

When he reached the rue Chanoinesse, he found Madame de la Chanterie and her friends just returning from high ma.s.s; in reply to the look she gave him G.o.defroid made her a significant sign with his head.

"Isn't our dear father Alain here to-day?" he said.

"No," she replied, "not this Sunday; you will not see him till a week from to-day--unless you go where he gave you rendezvous."

"Madame," said G.o.defroid in a low voice, "you know he doesn't intimidate me as these gentlemen do; I wanted to make my report to him--"

"And I?"

"Oh you! I can tell you all; and I have a great deal to tell. For my first essay I have found a most extraordinary misfortune; a cruel mingling of pauperism and the need for luxuries; also scenes of a sublimity which surpa.s.ses all the inventions of our great novelists."

"Nature, especially moral nature, is always greater than art, just as G.o.d is greater than his creatures. But come," said madame de la Chanterie, "tell me the particulars of your first trip into worlds unknown to you."

Monsieur Nicolas and Monsieur Joseph (for the Abbe de Veze had remained a few moments in Notre-Dame) left Madame de la Chanterie alone with G.o.defroid, who, being still under the influence of the emotions he had gone through the night before, related even the smallest details of his story with the force and ardor and action of a first experience of such a spectacle and its attendant persons and things. His narrative had a great success; for the calm and gentle Madame de la Chanterie wept, accustomed as she was to sound the depths of sorrows.

"You did quite right to send the accordion," she said.

"I would like to do a great deal more," said G.o.defroid; "inasmuch as this family is the first that has shown me the pleasures of charity, I should like to obtain for that splendid old man a full return for his great book. I don't know if you have confidence enough in my capacity to give me the means of undertaking such an affair. From information I have obtained, it will cost nine thousand francs to manufacture an edition of fifteen hundred copies, and their selling value will be twenty-four thousand francs. But as we should have to pay off the three thousand and some hundred francs due to Barbet, it would be an outlay of twelve thousand francs to risk. Oh! madame, if you only knew what bitter regrets I feel for having dissipated my little fortune! The spirit of charity has appeared to me; it fills me with the ardor of an initiate.

I wish to renounce the world, I long to embrace the life of these gentlemen and be worthy of you. Many a time during the last two days I have blessed the chance that brought me to this house. I will obey you in all things until you judge me fit to be one of yours."

"Then," said Madame de la Chanterie, after reflecting for a time, "listen to me, for I have important things to tell. You have been allured, my child, by the poesy of misfortune. Yes, misfortunes are often poetical; for, as I think, poesy is a certain effect on the sensibilities, and sorrows affect the sensibilities,--life is so intense in grief!"

"Yes, madame, I know that I have been gripped by the demon of curiosity. But how could I help it? I have not yet acquired the habit of penetrating to the heart of these great misfortunes; I cannot go among them with the calmness of your three soldiers of the Lord. But, let me tell you, it is since I have recovered from that first excitement that I have chiefly longed to devote myself to your work."