IN THAT STRANGE AND MIXED ATTITUDE OF TENDER OFFICES AND DEADLY SUSPICION THE TRIO DID WALKIN THAT STRANGE AND MIXED ATTITUDE OF TENDER OFFICES AND DEADLY SUSPICION THE TRIO DID WALK
"It is a new attitude to walk in; but please thyself."
And in that strange and mixed attitude of tender offices and deadly suspicion the trio did walk. I wish I could draw them: I would not trust to the pen.
The light of the watch-tower at Dusseldorf was visible as soon as they cleared the wood; and cheered Gerard. When, after an hour's march, the black outline of the tower itself and other buildings stood out clear to the eye, their companion halted and said gloomily, "You may as well slay me out of hand as take me any nearer the gates of Dusseldorf town."
On this being communicated to Denys, he said at once, "Let him go then, for in sooth his neck will be in jeopardy if he wends much further with us." Gerard acquiesced as a matter of course. His horror of a criminal did not in the least dispose him to active co-operation with the law. But the fact is, that at this epoch no private citizen in any part of Europe ever meddled with criminals but in self-defence, except by-the-by in England, which, behind other nations in some things, was centuries before them all in this.
The man's personal liberty being restored, he asked for his axe. It was given him. To the friends' surprise he still lingered. Was he to have nothing for coming so far out of his way with them?
"Here are two batzen, friend."
"And the wine, the good Rhenish?"
"Did you give aught for it?"
"Ay! the peril of my life."
"Hum! what say you, Denys?"
"I say it was worth its weight in gold. Here, lad, here be silver groshen, one for every acorn on that gallows tree: and here is one more for thee—who wilt doubtless be there in due season."
The man took the coins, but still lingered.
"Well? what now?" cried Gerard, who thought him shamefully overpaid already. "Do'st seek the hide off our bones?"
"Nay, good sirs; but you have seen to-night how parlous a life is mine. Ye be true men, and your prayers avail: give me then a small trifle of a prayer, an't please you; for I know not one."
Gerard's choler began to rise at the egotistical rogue; moreover, ever since his wound he had felt gusts of irritability. However,he bit his lip and said, "There go two words to that bargain; tell me first, is it true what men say of you Rhenish thieves, that ye do murder innocent and unresisting travellers as well as rob them?"
The other answered sulkily, "They you call thieves are not to blame for that; the fault lies with the law."
"Gramercy! so 'tis the law's fault that ill men break it?"
"I mean not so: but the law in this land slays an honest man an if he do but steal. What follows? he would be pitiful, but is discouraged herefrom: pity gains him no pity, and doubles his peril: an he but cut a purse his life is forfeit; therefore cutteth he the throat to boot to save his own neck: dead men tell no tales. Pray then for the poor soul, who by bloody laws is driven to kill or else be slaughtered; were there less of this unreasonable gibbeting on the high road, there should be less enforced cutting of throats in dark woods, my masters."
"Fewer words had served," replied Gerard, coldly; "I asked a question, I am answered," and, suddenly doffing his bonnet,
"'Obsecro Deum omnipotentem, ut, quâ cruce jam pendent isti quindecim latrones fures et homicidæ, in eâ homicida fur et latro tu pependeris quam citissime, pro publica salute, in honorem justi Dei cui sit gloria, in æternum, Amen.'"
"'Obsecro Deum omnipotentem, ut, quâ cruce jam pendent isti quindecim latrones fures et homicidæ, in eâ homicida fur et latro tu pependeris quam citissime, pro publica salute, in honorem justi Dei cui sit gloria, in æternum, Amen.'"
"And so good day."
The greedy outlaw was satisfied at last. "That is Latin," he muttered, "and more than I bargained for." So indeed it was.
And he returned to his business with a mind at ease. The friends pondered in silence the many events of the last few hours.
At last Gerard said, thoughtfully, "That she-bear saved both our lives—by God's will."
"Like enough," replied Denys; "and talking of that, it was lucky we did not dawdle over our supper."
"What mean you?"
"I mean they are not all hanged; I saw a refuse of seven or eight as black as ink around our fire."
"When? when?"
"Ere we had left it five minutes."
"Good heavens! And you said not a word."
"It would but have worried you, and had set our friend a looking back, and mayhap tempted him to get his skull split. Allother danger was over; they could not see us, we were out of the moonshine and indeed, just turning a corner; ah! there is the sun; and here are the gates of Dusseldorf. Courage, l'ami; le diable est mort."
"My head! my head!" was all poor Gerard could reply.
So many shocks, emotions, perils, horrors, added to the wound, his first, had tried his youthful body and sensitive nature, too severely.
It was noon of the same day.
In a bedroom of "The Silver Lion" the rugged Denys sat anxious, watching his young friend.
And he lay raging with fever, delirious at intervals, and one word for ever on his lips:
"Margaret!—Margaret!—Margaret!"
IT was the afternoon of the next day. Gerard was no longer light-headed, but very irritable, and full of fancies; and in one of these he begged Denys to get him a lemon to suck. Denys, who from a rough soldier had been turned by tender friendship into a kind of grandfather, got up hastily, and bidding him set his mind at ease, "lemons he should have in the twinkling of a quart pot," went and ransacked the shops for them.
They were not so common in the North as they are now, and he was absent a long while, and Gerard getting very impatient, when at last the door opened. But it was not Denys. Entered softly an imposing figure; an old gentleman in a long sober gown trimmed with rich fur, cherry-coloured hose, and pointed shoes, with a sword by his side in a morocco scabbard, a ruff round his neck not only starched severely, but treacherously stiffened in furrows by rebatoes, or a little hidden framework of wood; and on his head a four-cornered cap with a fur border; on his chin and bosom a majestic white beard. Gerard was in no doubt as to the vocation of his visitor, for, the sword excepted, this was as familiar to him as the full dress of a physician. Moreover a boy followed at his heels with a basket, where phials, lint and surgical tools rathercourted than shunned observation. The old gentleman came softly to the bedside, and said mildly and sotto voce, "How is't with thee, my son?"
Gerard answered gratefully that his wound gave him little pain now; but his throat was parched, and his head heavy.
"A wound? they told me not of that. Let me see it. Ay, ay, a good clean bite. The mastiff had sound teeth that took this out, I warrant me": and the good doctor's sympathy seemed to run off to the quadruped he had conjured; his jackal.
"This must be cauterized forthwith, or we shall have you starting back from water, and turning somersaults in bed under our hands. 'Tis the year for raving curs, and one hath done your business; but we will baffle him yet. Urchin, go heat thine iron."
"But, sir," edged in Gerard, "'twas no dog, but a bear."
"A bear! young man?" remonstrated the senior severely: "think what you say; 'tis ill jesting with the man of art who brings his grey hairs and long study to heal you. A bear quotha! Had you dissected as many bears as I, or the tithe, and drawn their teeth to keep your hand in, you would know that no bear's jaw ever made this foolish trifling wound. I tell you 'twas a dog, and, since you put me to it, I even deny that it was a dog of magnitude, but neither more nor less than one of these little furious curs that are so rife, and run devious, biting each manly leg, and laying its wearer low, but for me and my learned brethren, who still stay the mischief with knife and cautery."
"Alas sir! when said I 'twas a bear's jaw? I said, 'A bear': it was his paw, now."
"And why didst not tell me that at once?"
"Because you kept telling me instead."
"Never conceal aught from your leech, young man," continued the senior, who was a good talker, but one of the worst listeners in Europe. "Well, it is an ill business. All the horny excrescences of animals, to wit claws of tigers, panthers, badgers, cats, bears, and the like, and horn of deer, and nails of humans, especially children, are imbued with direst poison. Y'had better have been bitten by a cur,whatever you may say, than gored by bull or stag, or scratched by bear. However, shalt have a good biting cataplasm for thy leg; meantime keep we the body cool: put out thy tongue!good!—fever. Let me feel thy pulse: good!—fever. I ordain flebotomy and on the instant."
"Flebotomy! that is blood-letting: humph? Well no matter, if 'tis sure to cure me; for I will not lie idle here." The doctor let him know that flebotomy was infallible; especially in this case.
"Hans, go fetch the things needful; and I will entertain the patient meantime with reasons."
The man of art then explained to Gerard that in disease the blood becomes hot and distempered and more or less poisonous: but, a portion of this unhealthy liquid removed, Nature is fain to create a purer fluid to fill its place. Bleeding therefore, being both a cooler and a purifier, was a specific in all diseases for all diseases were febrile, whatever empirics might say.
"But think not," said he warmly, "that it suffices to bleed: any paltry barber can open a vein (though not all can close it again). The art is to know what vein to empty for what disease. T'other day they brought me one tormented with earache. I let him blood in the right thigh and away flew his earache. By-the-by he has died since then. Another came with the toothache. I bled him behind the ear, and relieved him in a giffy. He is also since dead as it happens. I bled our bailiff between the thumb and forefinger for rheumatism. Presently he comes to me with a headache and drumming in the ears, and holds out his hand over the basin; but I smiled at his folly, and bled him in the left ankle sore against his will, and made his head as light as a nut."
Diverging then from the immediate theme after the manner of enthusiasts, the reverend teacher proceeded thus:—
"Know, young man, that two schools of art contend at this moment throughout Europe. The Arabian, whose ancient oracles are Avicenna, Rhazes, Albucazis; and its revivers are Chauliac and Lanfranc; and the Greek school, whose modern champions are Bessarion, Platinus, and Marsilius Ficinus, but whose pristine doctors were medicine's very oracles, Phœbus, Chiron, Æsculapius, and his sons Podalinus and Machaon, Pythagoras, Democritus, Praxagoras who invented the arteries, and Dioctes 'qui primus urinæ animum dedit.' All these taught orally. Then came Hippocrates, the eighteenth from Æsculapius, and of him we have manuscripts; to him we owe 'the vital principle.' He also invented the bandage, and tapped for wateron the chest: and above all he dissected; yet only quadrupeds; for the brutal prejudices of the pagan vulgar withheld the human body from the knife of science. Him followed Aristotle, who gave us the aorta, the largest blood-vessel in the human body."
"Surely, sir, the Almighty gave us all that is in our bodies, and not Aristotle, nor any Grecian man," objected Gerard humbly.
"Child! of course He gave us the thing; but Aristotle did more, he gave us the name of the thing. But young men will still be talking. The next great light was Galen; he studied at Alexandria, then the home of science. He, justly malcontent with quadrupeds, dissected apes, as coming nearer to man: and bled like a Trojan. Then came Theophilus, who gave us the nerves, the lacteal vessels, and the pia mater."
This worried Gerard. "I cannot lie still and hear it said that mortal man bestowed the parts which Adam our father took from Him, who made him of the clay, and us his sons."
"Was ever such perversity?" said the doctor, his colour rising. "Who is the real donor of a thing to man? he who plants it secretly in the dark recesses of man's body, or the learned wight who reveals it to his intelligence, and so enriches his mind with the knowledge of it? Comprehension is your only true possession. Are you answered?"
"I am put to silence, sir."
"And that is better still: for garrulous patients are ill to cure, especially in fever: I say then that Eristratus gave us the cerebral nerves and the milk vessels; nay more, he was the inventor of lithotomy, whatever you may say. Then came another whom I forget: you do somewhat perturb me with your petty exceptions. Then came Ammonius the author of lithotrity, and here comes Hans with the basin—to stay your volubility. Blow thy chafer, boy, and hand me the basin; 'tis well. Arabians quotha! What are they but a sect of yesterday, who about the year 1000 did fall in with the writings of those very Greeks, and read them awry, having no concurrent light of their own? for their demigod, and camel-driver, Mahound, impostor in science as in religion, had strictly forbidden them anatomy even of the lower animals, the which he who severeth from medicine, 'tollit solem e mundo,' as Tully quoth. Nay, wonder not at my fervour, good youth. Where the general weal stands in jeopardy, a little warmth is civic, humane, and honourable;now there is settled of late in this town a pestilent Arabist, a mere empiric, who despising anatomy, and scarce knowing Greek from Hebrew, hath yet spirited away half my patients; and I tremble for the rest. Put forth thine ankle; and thou, Hans, breathe on the chafer."
Whilst matters were in this posture, in came Denys with the lemons, and stood surprised. "What sport is toward?" said he, raising his brows.
Gerard coloured a little and told him the learned doctor was going to flebotomize him and cauterize him; that was all.
"Ay! indeed; and yon imp, what bloweth he hot coals for?"
"What should it be for," said the doctor to Gerard, "but to cauterize the vein when opened, and the poisonous blood let free? 'Tis the only safe way. Avicenna indeed recommends a ligature of the vein; but how 'tis to be done he saith not, nor knew he himself I wot, nor any of the spawn of Ishmael. For me, I have no faith in such tricksy expedients: and take this with you for a safe principle! 'whatever an Arab or Arabist says is right, must be wrong.'"
"Oh, I see now what 'tis for," said Denys; "and art thou so simple as to let him put hot iron to thy living flesh? didst ever keep thy little finger but ten moments in a candle? and this will be as many minutes. Art not content to burn in purgatory after thy death? must thou needs buy a foretaste on't here?"
"I never thought of that," said Gerard gravely: "The good doctor spake not of burning, but of cautery; to be sure 'tis all one, but cautery sounds not so fearful as burning."
"Imbecile! That is their art; to confound a plain man with dark words, till his hissing flesh lets him know their meaning. Now listen to what I have seen. When a soldier bleeds from a wound in battle, these leeches say, 'Fever. Blood him!' and so they burn the wick at t'other end too. They bleed the bled. Now at fever's heels comes desperate weakness; then the man needs all his blood to live; but these prickers and burners, having no forethought, recking nought of what is sure to come in a few hours, and seeing like brute beasts only what is under their noses, have meantime robbed him of the very blood his hurt had spared him to battle that weakness withal; and so he dies exhausted: hundreds have I seen so scratched, and pricked, out of the world, Gerard, and tallfellows too: but lo! if they have the luck to be wounded where no doctor can be had, then they live; this too have I seen. Had I ever outlived that field in Brabant but for my most lucky mischance, lack of chirurgery? The frost choked all my bleeding wounds and so I lived. A chirurgeon had pricked yet one more hole in this my body with his lance, and drained my last drop out, and my spirit with it. Seeing them thus distraught in bleeding of the bleeding soldier, I place no trust in them; for what slays a veteran may well lay a milk-and-water bourgeois low."
"This sounds like common sense," sighed Gerard languidly, "but no need to raise your voice so: I was not born deaf, and just now I hear acutely."
"Common sense! very common sense indeed," shouted the bad listener; "why this is a soldier; a brute whose business is to kill men, not cure them." He added in very tolerable French, "Woe be to you, unlearned man, if you come between a physician and his patient, and woe be to you, misguided youth, if you listen to that man of blood."
"Much obliged," said Denys with mock politeness; "but I am a true man, and would rob no man of his name. I do somewhat in the way of blood, but not worth mention in this presence. For one I slay, you slay a score, and for one spoonful of blood I draw, you spill a tubful. The world is still gulled by shows. We soldiers vapour with long swords: and even in war beget two foes for every one we kill; but you smooth gownsmen, with soft phrases and bare bodkins, 'tis you that thin mankind."
"A sick chamber is no place for jesting," cried the physician.
"No, doctor, nor for bawling," said the patient peevishly.
"Come, young man," said the senior kindly; "be reasonable! Cuilibet in suâ arte credendum est. My whole life has been given to this art. I studied at Montpelier; the first school in France and by consequence in Europe. There learned I Dririmancy, Scatomancy, Pathology, Therapeusis, and, greater than them all, Anatomy. For there we disciples of Hippocrates and Galen had opportunities those great ancients never knew. Good-bye, quadrupeds and apes, and Paganism, and Mohammedanism; we bought of the churchwardens, we shook the gallows; we undid the sexton's work o' dark nights, penetrated with love of science and our kind; all the authorities had their orders from Paris to wink; and they winked. Godsof Olympus, how they winked! The gracious king assisted us; he sent us twice a year a living criminal condemned to die, and said 'Deal ye with him as science asks: dissect him alive, if ye think fit.'"
"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 eachbooty? 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 bespeakhisundertaker, and thenhewould 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 curé 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, asthe 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 pricks 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."
Gerard then indirectly rebuked his noisy counsellers by contrast and example. He spoke with unparalleled calmness, sweetness, and gentleness. And these were the words of Gerard the son of Eli. "I doubt not you both mean me well: but you assassinate me between you. Calmness and quiet are everything to me; but you are like two dogs growling over a bone.
"And in sooth, bone I should be, did this uproar last long."
There was a dead silence, broken only by the silvery voice of Gerard, as he lay tranquil, and gazed calmly at the ceiling, and trickled into words.
"First, venerable sir, I thank you for coming to see me, whether from humanity, or in the way of honest gain; all trades must live.
"Your learning, reverend sir, seems great, to me at least, and for your experience, your age voucheth it.
"You say you have bled many, and of these many many have not died thereafter, but lived, and done well. I must needs believe you."
The physician bowed; Denys grunted.
"Others you say you have bled, and—they are dead. I must needs believe you.
"Denys knows few things compared with you, but he knows them well. He is a man not given to conjecture. This I myself have noted. He says he has seen the fevered and blooded for the most part die; the fevered and not blooded live. I must needs believe him.
"Here, then, all is doubt.
"But thus much is certain; if I be bled, I must pay you a fee, and be burnt and excruciated with a hot iron, who am no felon.
"Pay a certain price in money and anguish for a doubtful remedy, that will I never.
"Next to money and ease, peace and quiet are certain goods, above all in a sick-room; but 'twould seem men cannot argue medicine without heat and raised voices; therefore, sir, I will essay a little sleep, and Denys will go forth and gaze on the females of the place, and I will keep you no longer from those who can afford to lay out blood, and money, in flebotomy and cautery."
The old physician had naturally a hot temper; he had often during this battle of words mastered it with difficulty, and now it mastered him. The most dignified course was silence; he saw this, and drew himself up and made loftily for the door, followed close by his little boy and big basket.
But at the door he choked, he swelled, he burst. He whirled and came back open-mouthed, and the little boy and big basket had to whisk semicircularly not to be run down, for de minimis non curat Medicina—even when not in a rage.
"Ah! you reject my skill, you scorn my art. My revenge shall be to leave you to yourself; lost idiot, take your last look at me, and at the sun. Your blood be on your head!" And away he stamped.
But on reaching the door he whirled and came back; his wicker tail twirling round after him like a cat's.
"In twelve hours at furthest you will be in the secondary stage of fever. Your head will split. Your carotids will thump. Aha! And let but a pin fall you will jump to the ceiling. Then send for me: and I'll not come." He departed. But at the door-handle gathered fury, wheeled and came flying, with pale, terror-stricken boy and wicker tail whisking after him. "Next will come—Crampsof theStomach. Aha!
"Then—Bilious Vomit. Aha!
"Then—Cold Sweat, andDeadly Stupor.
"Then—Confusion of all the Senses.
"Then—Bloody Vomit.
"And after that nothing can save you, not even I: and if I could I would not, and so farewell!"
Even Denys changed colour at threats so fervent and precise;but Gerard only gnashed his teeth with rage at the noise, and seized his hard bolster with kindling eye.
This added fuel to the fire and brought the insulted ancient back from the impassable door, with his whisking train.
"And after that—Madness!
"And after that—Black Vomit!
"And then—Convulsions!
"And then—That Cessation of all Vital Functions the Vulgar Call 'Death,'for which thank your own Satanic folly and insolence, farewell." He went. He came. He roared, "And think not to be buried in any Christian churchyard; for the bailiff is my good friend, and I shall tell him how and why you died: felo de se! felo de se! Farewell."
Gerard sprang to his feet on the bed by some supernatural gymnastic power excitement lent him, and, seeing him so moved, the vindictive orator came back at him fiercer than ever, to launch some master-threat the world has unhappily lost: for as he came with his whisking train, and shaking his fist, Gerard hurled the bolster furiously in his face, and knocked him down like a shot, the boy's head cracked under his falling master's, and crash went the dumb-strickened orator into the basket; and there sat wedged in an inverted angle, crushing phial after phial. The boy, being light, was strewed afar; but in a squatting posture: so that they sat in a sequence like graduated specimens, the smaller howling. But soon the doctor's face filled with horror, and he uttered a far louder and unearthly screech, and kicked and struggled with wonderful agility for one of his age.
He was sitting on the hot coals.
They had singed the cloth and were now biting the man. Struggling wildly but vainly to get out of the basket, he rolled yelling over with it sideways, and lo! a great hissing: then the humane Gerard ran and wrenched off the tight basket not without a struggle. The doctor lay on his face groaning, handsomely singed with his own chafer, and slaked a moment too late by his own villainous compounds, which however, being as various and even beautiful in colour, as they were odious in taste, had strangely diversified his grey robe and painted it more gaudy than neat.
Gerard and Denys raised him up and consoled him. "Courage,man, 'tis but cautery; balm of Gilead; why you recommended it but now to my comrade here."
The physician replied only by a look of concentrated spite, and went out in dead silence, thrusting his stomach forth before him in the drollest way. The boy followed him next moment, but in that slight interval he left off whining, burst in a grin, and conveyed to the culprits by an unrefined gesture his accurate comprehension of, and rapturous though compressed joy at, his master's disaster.
THE worthy physician went home and told his housekeeper he was in agony from "a bad burn." Those were the words. For in phlogistic, as in other things, we cauterize our neighbour's digits, but burn our own fingers. His housekeeper applied some old woman's remedy mild as milk. He submitted like a lamb to her experience: his sole object in the case of this patient being cure: meantime he made out his bill for broken phials, and took measures to have the travellers imprisoned at once. He made oath before a magistrate that they, being strangers and indebted to him, meditated instant flight from the township.
Alas! it was his unlucky day. His sincere desire, and honest endeavour, to perjure himself, were baffled by a circumstance he had never foreseen nor indeed thought possible.
He had spoken the truth.
Andin an affidavit!
The officers, on reaching the Silver Lion, found the birds were flown.
They went down to the river, and, from intelligence they received there started up the bank in hot pursuit.
This temporary escape the friends owed to Denys's good sense and observation. After a peal of laughter, that it was a cordial to hear, and after venting his watchword three times, he turned short grave, and told Gerard Dusseldorf was no place for them. "That old fellow," said he, "went off unnaturally silent for such a babbler: we are strangers here:the bailiff is his friend:in five minutes weshall lie in a dungeon for assaulting a Dusseldorf dignity: are you strong enough to hobble to the water's edge? it is hard by. Once there you have but to lie down in a boat instead of a bed: and what is the odds?"
"The odds? Denys? untold, and all in favour of the boat. I pine for Rome: for Rome is my road to Sevenbergen: and then we shall lie in the boat, butonthe Rhine, the famous Rhine: the cool, refreshing Rhine. I feel its breezes coming: the very sight will cure a little hop-o'-my-thumb fever like mine; away! away!"
Finding his excitable friend in this mood, Denys settled hastily with the landlord, and they hurried to the river. On inquiry they found to their dismay that the public boat was gone this half-hour, and no other would start that day, being afternoon. By dint however of asking a great many questions, and collecting a crowd, they obtained an offer of a private boat from an old man and his two sons.
This was duly ridiculed by a bystander. "The current is too strong for three oars."
"Then my comrade and I will help row," said the invalid.
"No need," said the old man. "Bless your silly heart,heowns t'other boat."
There was a powerful breeze right astern; the boatmen set a broad sail, and, rowing also, went off at a spanking rate.
"Are ye better, lad, for the river breeze?"
"Much better. But indeed the doctor did me good."
"The doctor? Why you would none of his cures."
"No, but I mean—you will say I am nought—but knocking the old fool down—somehow—it soothed me."
"Amiable dove! how thy little character opens more and more every day, like a rosebud. I read thee all wrong at first."
"Nay, Denys, mistake me not, neither. I trust I had borne with his idle threats, though in sooth his voice went through my poor ears: but he was an infidel, or next door to one, and such I have been taught to abhor. Did he not as good as say, we owed our inward parts to men with long Greek names, and not to Him, whose name is but a syllable, but whose hand is over all the earth? Pagan!"
"So you knocked him down forthwith—like a good Christian."
"Now Denys, you will still be jesting. Take not an ill man's part! Had it been a thunderbolt from Heaven, he had met but his due; yet he took but a sorry bolster from this weak arm."
"What weak arm?" inquired Denys with twinkling eyes. "I have lived among arms, and by Samson's hairy paw never saw I one more like a catapult. The bolster wrapped round his nose and the two ends kissed behind his head, and his forehead resounded, and had he been Goliath, or Julius Cæsar, instead of an old quacksalver, down he had gone. St. Denys guard me from such feeble opposites as thou! and above all from their weak arms—thou diabolical young hypocrite."
The river took many turns, and this sometimes brought the wind on their side instead of right astern. Then they all moved to the weather side to prevent the boat heeling over too much; all but a child of about five years old, the grandson of the boatman, and his darling: this urchin had slipped on board at the moment of starting, and being too light to affect the boat's trim was above, or rather below, the laws of navigation.
They sailed merrily on, little conscious that they were pursued by a whole posse of constables armed with the bailiff's writ, and that their pursuers were coming up with them: for, if the wind was strong, so was the current.
And now Gerard suddenly remembered that this was a very good way to Rome but not to Burgundy. "Oh Denys," said he with an almost alarmed look, "this is not your road."
"I know it," said Denys quietly. "But what can I do? I cannot leave thee till the fever leaves thee: and 'tis on thee still; for thou art both red and white by turns; I have watched thee. I must e'en go on to Cologne I doubt, and then strike across."
"Thank Heaven," said Gerard, joyfully. He added eagerly with a little touch of self-deception, "'Twere a sin to be so near Cologne and not see it. Oh man, it is a vast and ancient city, such as I have often dreamed of, but ne'er had the good luck to see. Me miserable, by what hard fortune do I come to it now. Well then, Denys," continued the young man less warmly, "it is old enough to have been founded by a Roman lady in the first century of grace, and sacked by Attila the barbarous, and afterwards sore defaced by the Norman Lothaire. And it has a church for every week in the year, forbye chapels and churches innumerable of convents and nunneries, and above all the stupendous minster yet unfinished, and therein, but in their own chapel, lie the three kings that broughtgifts to our Lord, Melchior gold, and Gaspar frankincense, and Balthazar the black king, he brought myrrh: and over their bones stands the shrine the wonder of the world; it is of ever-shining brass brighter than gold, studded with images fairly wrought, and inlaid with exquisite devices, and brave with colours; and two broad stripes run to and fro of jewels so great so rare, each might adorn a crown or ransom its wearer at need: and upon it stand the three kings curiously counterfeited, two in solid silver richly gilt; these be bareheaded; but he of Æthiop ebony, and beareth a golden crown: and in the midst our blessed Lady in virgin silver, with Christ in her arms; and at the corners, in golden branches, four goodly waxen tapers do burn night and day. Holy eyes have watched and renewed that light unceasingly for ages, and holy eyes shall watch them in sæcula. I tell thee, Denys, the oldest song, the oldest Flemish or German legend, found them burning, and they shall light the earth to its grave. And there is St. Ursel's church, a British saint's, where lie her bones and all the other virgins her fellows: eleven thousand were they who died for the faith, being put to the sword by barbarous Moors, on the twenty-third day of October, two hundred and thirty-eight: their bones are piled in the vaults, and many of their skulls are in the church. St. Ursel's is in a thin golden case, and stands on the high altar, but shown to humble Christians only on solemn days."
"Eleven thousand virgins!" cried Denys. "What babies German men must have been in days of yore. Well: would all their bones might turn flesh again, and their skulls sweet faces, as we pass through the gates. 'Tis odds but some of them are wearied of their estate by this time."
"Tush, Denys!" said Gerard; "why wilt thou, being good, still make thyself seem evil? If thy wishing-cap be on, pray that we may meet the meanest she of all those wise virgins in the next world: and, to that end, let us reverence their holy dust in this one. And then there is the church of the Maccabees, and the caldron, in which they and their mother Solomona were boiled by a wicked king for refusing to eat swine's flesh."
"O peremptory king! and pig-headed Maccabees! I had eaten bacon with my pork liever than change places at the fire with my meat."
"What scurvy words are these? it was their faith."
"Nay, bridle thy choler, and tell me, are there nought but churches in this thy so vaunted city? For I affect rather Sir Knight than Sir Priest."
"Ay marry, there is an university near a hundred years old; and there is a market place; no fairer in the world: and at the four sides of it houses great as palaces; and there is a stupendious senate-house all covered with images, and at the head of them stands one of stout Herman Gryn, a soldier like thyself, lad."
"Ay. Tell me of him! what feat of arms earned him his niche?"
"A rare one. He slew a lion in fair combat, with nought but his cloak and a short sword. He thrust the cloak in the brute's mouth, and cut his spine in twain, and there is the man's effigy and eke the lion's to prove it. The like was never done but by three more I ween; Samson was one, and Lysimachus of Macedon another, and Benaiah, a captain of David's host."
"Marry! three tall fellows. I would like well to sup with them all to-night."
"So would not I," said Gerard drily.
"But tell me," said Denys, with some surprise, "when wast thou in Cologne?"
"Never, but in the spirit. I prattle with the good monks by the way, and they tell me all the notable things both old and new."
"Ay, ay, have not I seen your nose under their very cowls? But when I speak of matters that are out of sight, my words they are small, and the thing it was big: now thy words be as big or bigger than the things; art a good limner with thy tongue; I have said it: and, for a saint, as ready with hand, or steel, or bolster—as any poor sinner living: and so, shall I tell thee which of all these things thou has described draws me to Cologne?"
"Ay, Denys."
"Thou, and thou only; no dead saint, but my living friend and comrade true; 'tis thou alone draws Denys of Burgundy to Cologne."
Gerard hung his head.
At this juncture one of the younger boatmen suddenly inquired what was amiss with "little turnip-face?"
His young nephew thus described had just come aft grave as a judge, and burst out crying in the midst without more ado. Onthis phenomenon, so sharply defined, he was subjected to many interrogatories, some coaxingly uttered, some not. Had he hurt himself? had he over-ate himself? was he frightened? was he cold? was he sick? was he an idiot?
To all and each he uttered the same reply, which English writers render thus, oh! oh! oh! and French writers thus, hi! hi! hi! So fixed are Fiction's phonetics.
"Who can tell what ails the peevish brat?" snarled the young boatman impatiently. "Rather look this way and tell me whom be these after!" The old man and his other son looked, and saw four men walking along the east bank of the river; at the sight they left rowing awhile, and gathered mysteriously in the stern, whispering and casting glances alternately at their passengers and the pedestrians.
The sequel may show they would have employed speculation better in trying to fathom the turnip-face mystery: I beg pardon of my age: I mean "the deep mind of dauntless infancy."
"If 'tis as I doubt," whispered one of the young men, "why not give them a squeak for their lives; let us make for the west bank."
The old man objected stoutly. "What," said he, "run our heads into trouble for strangers? are ye mad? Nay, let us rather cross to the east side: still side with the strong arm! that is my rede. What say you, Werter?"
"I say, please yourselves."
What age and youth could not decide upon, a puff of wind settled most impartially. Came a squall and the little vessel heeled over: the men jumped to windward to trim her: but, to their horror, they saw in the very boat from stem to stern a ditch of water rushing to leeward, and the next moment they saw nothing, but felt the Rhine: the cold and rushing Rhine.
"Turnip-face" had drawn the plug.
The officers unwound the cords from their waists.