The Imaginary Invalid Part 16

TOI. He is unworthy of your care.

MR. PUR. But since you would not be cured by me....

ARG. It was not my fault.

MR. PUR. Since you have forsaken the obedience you owe to your doctor....

TOI. It cries for vengeance.

MR. PUR. Since you have declared yourself a rebel against the remedies I had prescribed for you....

ARG. No, no, certainly not.

MR. PUR. I must now tell you that I give you up to your bad const.i.tution, to the imtemperament of your intestines, to the corruption of your blood, to the acrimony of your bile, and to the feculence of your humours.

TOI. It serves you right.

ARG. Alas!

MR. PUR. And I will have you before four days in an incurable state.

ARG. Ah! mercy on me!

MR. PUR. You shall fall into bradypepsia.

ARG. Mr. Purgon!

MR. PUR. From bradypepsia into dyspepsia.

ARG. Mr. Purgon!

MR. PUR. From dyspepsia into apepsy.

ARG. Mr. Purgon!

MR. PUR. From apepsy into lientery.

ARG. Mr. Purgon!

MR. PUR. From lientery into dysentery.

ARG. Mr. Purgon!

MR. PUR. From dysentery into dropsy.

ARG. Mr. Purgon!

MR. PUR. And from dropsy to the deprivation of life into which your folly will bring you.

SCENE VII--ARGAN, BeRALDE.

ARG. Ah heaven! I am dead. Brother, you have undone me.

BER. Why? What is the matter?

ARG. I am undone. I feel already that the faculty is avenging itself.

BER. Really, brother, you are crazy, and I would not for a great deal that you should be seen acting as you are doing. Shake yourself a little, I beg, recover yourself, and do not give way so much to your imagination.

ARG. You hear, brother, with what strange diseases he has threatened me.

BER. What a foolish fellow you are!

ARG. He says that I shall become incurable within four days.

BER. And what does it signify what he says? Is it an oracle that has spoken? To hear you, anyone would think that Mr. Purgon holds in his hands the thread of your life, and that he has supreme authority to prolong it or to cut it short at his will. Remember that the springs of your life are in yourself, and that all the wrath of Mr. Purgon can do as little towards making you die, as his remedies can do to make you live. This is an opportunity, if you like to take it, of getting rid of your doctors; and if you are so const.i.tuted that you cannot do without them, it is easy for you, brother, to have another with whom you run less risk.

ARG. Ah, brother! he knows all about my const.i.tution, and the way to treat me.

BER. I must acknowledge that you are greatly infatuated, and that you look at things with strange eyes.

SCENE VIII.--ARGAN, TOINETTE, BeRALDE.

TOI. (_to_ ARGAN). There is a doctor, here, Sir, who desires to see you.

ARG. What doctor?

TOI. A doctor of medicine.

ARG. I ask you who he is?

TOI. I don't know who he is, but he is as much like me as two peas, and if I was not sure that my mother was an honest woman, I should say that this is a little brother she has given me since my father's death.

SCENE IX.--ARGAN, BeRALDE.

BER. You are served according to your wish. One doctor leaves you, another comes to replace him.

ARG. I greatly fear that you will cause some misfortune.

BER. Oh! You are harping upon that string again?

ARG. Ah! I have on my mind all those diseases that I don't understand, those ...

SCENE X.--ARGAN, BeRALDE, TOINETTE (_dressed as a doctor_).