The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo [95]
“By the way, Dom Claude, I bring you a brother worker, who was anxious to see you, being familiar with your fame.”
“A gentleman of science?” inquired the archdeacon, fixing his piercing eye upon Coictier’s companion. The stranger returned his gaze with an equally searching and defiant look.
As well as the feeble light of the lamp allowed one to judge, he was an elderly man of some sixty years, and of medium height, apparently quite ill and broken. His profile, although not at all aristocratic, was still strong and severe; his eye flashed from beneath a very prominent brow, like a light from the depths of a cave; and under the flat cap which drooped over his face, the broad forehead of a man of genius was visible.
He took upon himself to answer the archdeacon’s question.
“Reverend sir,” he said in grave tones, “your renown has reached me, and I desired to consult you. I am only a poor country gentleman, who takes off his shoes before venturing into the presence of learned men. You must know my name. I am Comperebt Tourangeau.”
“An odd name for a gentleman!” thought the archdeacon. Still, he felt that he had before him a strong and serious character. The instinct of his lofty intellect led him to guess that a spirit no less lofty lurked beneath the furred cap of Compere Tourangeau; and as he studied his grave face, the ironical smile which the presence of Jacques Coictier had forced to his sullen lips faded slowly, as twilight fades from the sky at night. He reseated himself silently and moodily in his great arm-chair, his elbow resumed its wonted place upon the table, and his head on his hand. After a few moments of meditation he signed to the two visitors to be seated, and addressed Compere Tourangeau:—
“You came to consult me, sir; and upon what branch of science?”
“Your reverence,” replied Tourangeau, “I am ill; very ill. You are said to be a great doctor, and I come to you for medical advice.”
“Medical advice!” said the archdeacon, shaking his head. He seemed communing with himself an instant, then added: “Compere Tourangeau, if that be your name, turn your head. You will find my answer ready written on the wall.”
Tourangeau obeyed, and read this inscription on the wall above his head: “Medicine is the daughter of dreams.—JAMBLIQUE.”
But Doctor Jacques Coictier listened to his comrade’s question with a displeasure only increased by Dom Claude’s answer. He bent to Tourangeau’s ear and said, low enough not to be overheard by the archdeacon, “I told you he was a madman; but you insisted on seeing him!”
“Because this madman may well be right, Doctor Jacques!” replied the stranger, in the same tone, and with a bitter smile.
“As you please,” answered Coictier, dryly. Then turning to the archdeacon: “You are an apt workman, Dom Claude, and you handle Hippocrates as deftly as a monkey does a nut. Medicine a dream, indeed! I doubt me the druggists and the old masters would stone you well, were they here. Then you deny the influence of philters on the blood, of ointments on the flesh! You deny that everlasting pharmacy of flowers and metals which we call the world, made expressly for that eternal sufferer whom we call man!”
“I deny,” said Dom Claude, coldly, “neither drugs nor disease. I deny the physician.”
“Then it is false,” continued Coictier, with warmth, “that gout is an inward eruption, that a cannon-wound may be cured by the application of a roasted mouse, that young blood properly infused restores youth to old veins; it is false to say that two and two make four, and that emprostathonos follows opistathonos.”
The archdeacon quietly replied, “There are certain things which I regard in a certain way.”
Coictier turned red with rage.
“There, there, my good Coictier, don’t be angry!” said Tourangeau. “The archdeacon is