Part 71 (1/2)
”My lord,” said Guenaud, seating himself beside the bed; ”your e your life; your eminence has suffered much”
”But I am not old, I fancy The late M de Richelieu was but seventeen er than I a, Guenaud: remember, I am scarcely fifty-two”
”Oh!did the Fronde last?”
”For what purpose do you put such a question to neur”
”Well, soh to reckon every year of the Fronde as three years--that makes thirty; noenty and fifty-two makes seventy-two years You are seventy-two,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, neur”
”You take a roundabout way, then, to inform me that I am very ill?”
”Ma foi! yes, e of your eht 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:
”Re of your patients; remember I obey you blindly, and that consequently--”
”I know all that,” said Guenaud
”I shall be cured, then?”
”Monseigneur, there is neither strength of will, nor power, nor genius, nor science that can resist a disease which God doubtless sends, or which He cast upon the earth at the creation, with full power to destroy and killcan--”
”Is--my--disease--mortal?” asked Mazarin
”Yes, my lord”
His eminence sank down for acolu one, or rather hisfrom his first shock, ”you will perether the most learned men of Europe: I will consult them
I will live, in short, by the virtue of I care not what remedy”
”My lord must not suppose,” said Guenaud, ”that I have the presumption to pronounce alone upon an existence so valuable as yours I have already asseood physicians and practitioners of France and Europe There were twelve of them”