Part 36 (1/2)

”By the liver of Herod, and Nero's bowels, he'll make me blush for the land that bore me, an if he praises it any more,” shouted Denys at the top of his voice.

Gerard gave a little squawk, and put his fingers in his ears; but speedily drew them out and shouted angrily, and as loudly, ”You great, roaring, blaspheming, bull of Basan, hold your noisy tongue!”

Denys summoned a contrite look.

”Tush, slight man,” said the doctor with calm contempt, and vibrated a hand over him as in this age men make a pointer dog down charge; then flowed majestic on. ”We seldom, or never dissected the living criminal, except in part. We mostly inoculated them with such diseases as the barren time afforded, selecting of course the more interesting ones.”

”That means the foulest,” whispered Denys meekly.

”These we watched through all their stages, to maturity.”

”Meaning the death of the poor rogue,” whispered Denys meekly.

”And now, my poor sufferer, who best merits your confidence, this honest soldier with his youth, his ignorance, and his prejudices, or a greybeard laden with the gathered wisdom of ages?”

”That is,” cried Denys impatiently, ”will you believe what a jackdaw in a long gown has heard from a starling in a long gown, who heard it from a jay-pie, who heard it from a magpie, who heard it from a popinjay; or will you believe what I, a man with nought to gain by looking awry, nor speaking false, have seen; not heard with the ears which are given us to gull us, but seen with these sentinels mine eyne, seen, seen; to wit that fevered and blooded men die, that fevered men not blooded live?

stay, who sent for this sang-sue? Did you?”

”Not I. I thought you had.”

”Nay,” explained the doctor, ”the good landlord told me one was 'down'

in his house: so I said to myself, 'a stranger, and in need of my art'; and came incontinently.”

”It was the act of a good Christian, sir.”

”Of a good bloodhound,” cried Denys contemptuously. ”What, art thou so green as not to know that all these landlords are in league with certain of their fellow-citizens, who pay them toll on each booty? Whatever you pay this ancient for stealing your life blood, of that the landlord takes his third for betraying you to him. Nay, more, as soon as ever your blood goes down the stair in that basin there, the landlord will see it or smell it, and send swiftly to his undertaker and get his third out of that job. For if he waited till the doctor got down stairs, the doctor would be beforehand and bespeak _his_ undertaker, and then _he_ would get the black thirds. Say I sooth, old Rouge et Noir? dites!”

”Denys, Denys, who taught you to think so ill of man?”

”Mine eyes, that are not to be gulled by what men say, seeing this many a year what they do, in all the lands I travel.”

The doctor with some address made use of these last words to escape the personal question. ”I too have eyes as well as thou, and go not by tradition only, but by what I have seen, and not only seen but done. I have healed as many men by bleeding, as that interloping Arabist has killed for want of it. 'Twas but t'other day I healed one threatened with leprosy; I but bled him at the tip of the nose. I cured last year a quartan ague: how? bled its forefinger. Our cure lost his memory. I brought it him back on the point of my lance; I bled him behind the ear.

I bled a dolt of a boy, and now he is the only one who can tell his right hand from his left in a whole family of idiots. When the plague was here years ago, no sham plague, such as empirics proclaim every six years or so but the good honest Byzantine pest, I blooded an alderman freely, and cauterized the symptomatic buboes, and so pulled him out of the grave: whereas our then chirurgeon, a most pernicious Arabist, caught it himself, and died of it, aha, calling on Rhazes, Avicenna, and Mahound, who, could they have come, had all perished as miserably as himself.”

”Oh, my poor ears,” sighed Gerard.

”And am I fallen so low that one of your presence and speech rejects my art, and listens to a rude soldier, so far behind even his own miserable trade as to bear an arbalest, a worn-out invention, that German children shoot at pigeons with, but German soldiers mock at since ever arquebusses came and put them down?”

”You foul-mouthed old charlatan,” cried Denys, ”the arbalest is shouldered by taller men than ever stood in Rhenish hose, and even now it kills as many more than your noisy, stinking arquebuss, as the lancet does than all our toys together. Go to! He was no fool who first called you 'leeches.' Sang-sues! va!”

Gerard groaned. ”By the holy virgin, I wish you were both at Jericho, bellowing.”

”Thank you, comrade. Then I'll bark no more, but at need I'll bite. If he has a lance, I have a sword; if he bleeds you, I'll bleed him. The moment his lance p.r.i.c.ks your skin, little one, my sword-hilt knocks against his ribs; I have said it.”

And Denys turned pale, folded his arms, and looked gloomy and dangerous.

Gerard sighed wearily. ”Now, as all this is about me, give me leave to say a word.”

”Ay! let the young man choose life or death for himself.”