The Imaginary Invalid Part 17

TOI. Allow me, Sir, to come and pay my respects to you, and to offer you my small services for all the bleedings and purging you may require.

ARG. I am much obliged to you, Sir. (_To_ BeRALDE) Toinette herself, I declare!

TOI. I beg you will excuse me one moment, Sir. I forgot to give a small order to my servant.

SCENE XI.--ARGAN, BeRALDE.

ARG. Would you not say that this is really Toinette?

BER. It is true that the resemblance is very striking. But it is not the first time that we have seen this kind of thing, and history is full of those freaks of nature.

ARG. For my part, I am astonished, and ...

SCENE XII.--ARGAN, BeRALDE, TOINETTE.

TOI. What do you want, Sir?

ARG. What?

TOI. Did you not call me?

ARG. I? No.

TOI. My ears must have tingled then.

ARG. Just stop here one moment and see how much that doctor is like you.

TOI. Ah! yes, indeed, I have plenty of time to waste! Besides, I have seen enough of him already.

SCENE XIII.--ARGAN, BeRALDE.

ARG. Had I not seen them both together, I should have believed it was one and the same person.

BER. I have read wonderful stories about such resemblances; and we have seen some in our day that have taken in everybody.

ARG. For my part, I should have been deceived this time, and sworn that the two were but one.

SCENE XIV.--ARGAN, BeRALDE, TOINETTE (_as a doctor_).

TOI. Sir, I beg your pardon with all my heart.

ARG. (_to_ BeRALDE). It is wonderful.

TOI. You will not take amiss, I hope, the curiosity I feel to see such an ill.u.s.trious patient; and your reputation, which reaches the farthest ends of the world, must be my excuse for the liberty I am taking.

ARG. Sir, I am your servant.

TOI. I see, Sir, that you are looking earnestly at me. What age do you think I am?

ARG. I should think twenty-six or twenty-seven at the utmost.

TOI. Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! I am ninety years old.

ARG. Ninety years old!

TOI. Yes; this is what the secrets of my art have done for me to preserve me fresh and vigorous as you see.

ARG. Upon my word, a fine youthful old fellow of ninety!

TOI. I am an itinerant doctor, and go from town to town, from province to province, from kingdom to kingdom, to seek out ill.u.s.trious material for my abilities; to find patients worthy of my attention, capable of exercising the great and n.o.ble secrets which I have discovered in medicine. I disdain to amuse myself with the small rubbish of common diseases, with the trifles of rheumatism, coughs, fevers, vapours, and headaches. I require diseases of importance, such as good non-intermittent fevers with delirium, good scarlet-fevers, good plagues, good confirmed dropsies, good pleurisies with inflammations of the lungs. These are what I like, what I triumph in, and I wish, Sir, that you had all those diseases combined, that you had been given up, despaired of by all the doctors, and at the point of death, so that I might have the pleasure of showing you the excellency of my remedies, and the desire I have of doing you service!

ARG. I am greatly obliged to you, Sir, for the kind intentions you have towards me.

TOI. Let me feel your pulse. Come, come, beat properly, please. Ah! I will soon make you beat as you should. This pulse is trifling with me; I see that it does not know me yet. Who is your doctor?

ARG. Mr. Purgon.

TOI. That man is not noted in my books among the great doctors. What does he say you are ill of?

ARG. He says it is the liver, and others say it is the spleen.

TOI. They are a pack of ignorant blockheads; you are suffering from the lungs.

ARG. The lungs?

TOI. Yes; what do you feel?

ARG. From time to time great pains in my head.

TOI. Just so; the lungs.

ARG. At times it seems as if I had a mist before my eyes.

TOI. The lungs.

ARG. I feel sick now and then.

TOI. The lungs.

ARG. And I feel sometimes a weariness in all my limbs.

TOI. The lungs.

ARG. And sometimes I have sharp pains in the stomach, as if I had the colic.