Guenaud.
The cardinal's order was pressing; Guenaud quickly obeyed it. He found his patient stretched on his bed, his legs swelled, his face livid, and his stomach collapsed. Mazarin had a severe attack of gout. He suffered tortures with the impatience of a man who has not been accustomed to resistances. On seeing Guenaud: "Ah!" said he; "now I am saved!"
Guenaud was a very learned and circumspect man, who stood in no need of the critiques of Boileau to obtain a reputation. When facing a disease, if it were personified in a king, he treated the patient as a Turk treats a Moor. He did not, therefore, reply to Mazarin as the minister expected: "Here is the doctor; good-bye disease!" On the contrary, on examining his patient, with a very serious air:
"Oh! oh!" said he.
"Eh! what! Guenaud! How you look at me!"
"I look as I should on seeing your complaint, my lord; it is a very dangerous one."
"The gout - oh! yes, the gout."
"With complications, my lord."
Mazarin raised himself upon his elbow, and, questioning by look and gesture: "What do you mean by that? Am I worse than I believe myself to be?"
"My lord," said Guenaud, seating himself beside the bed; "your eminence has worked very hard during your life; your eminence has suffered much."
"But I am not old, I fancy. The late M. de Richelieu was but seventeen months younger than I am when he died, and died of a mortal disease. I am young, Guenaud: remember, I am scarcely fifty-two."
"Oh! my lord, you are much more than that. How long did the Fronde last?"
"For what purpose do you put such a question to me?"
"For a medical calculation, monseigneur."
"Well, some ten years - off and on."
"Very well; be kind enough to reckon every year of the Fronde as three years - that makes thirty; now twenty and fifty-two makes seventy-two years. You are seventy-two, my lord; and that is a great age."
Whilst saying this, he felt the pulse of his patient. This pulse was full of such fatal indications, that the physician continued, notwithstanding the interruptions of the patient: "Put down the years of the Fronde at four each, and you have lived eighty-two years."
"Are you speaking seriously, Guenaud?"
"Alas! yes, monseigneur."
"You take a roundabout way, then, to inform me that I am very ill?"
"_Ma foi!_ yes, my lord, and with a man of the mind and courage of your eminence, it ought not to be necessary to do so."
The cardinal breathed with such difficulty that he inspired pity even in a pitiless physician. "There are diseases and diseases," resumed Mazarin. "From some of them people escape."
"That is true, my lord."
"Is it not?" cried Mazarin, almost joyously; "for, in short, what else would be the use of power, of strength of will? What would the use of genius be - your genius, Guenaud? What would be the use of science and art, if the patient, who disposes of all that, cannot be saved from peril?"
Guenaud was about to open his mouth, but Mazarin continued:
"Remember," said he, "I am the most confiding of your patients; remember I obey you blindly, and that consequently - "
"I know all that," said Guenaud.
"I shall be cured, then?"