The Treasure of Franchard

CHAPTER I. BY THE DYING MOUNTEBANK.

They had sent for the doctor from Bourron before six. About eight
some villagers came round for the performance, and were told how
matters stood. It seemed a liberty for a mountebank to fall ill
like real people, and they made off again in dudgeon. By ten
Madame Tentaillon was gravely alarmed, and had sent down the street
for Doctor Desprez.

The Doctor was at work over his manuscripts in one corner of the
little dining-room, and his wife was asleep over the fire in
another, when the messenger arrived.

'Sapristi!' said the Doctor, 'you should have sent for me before.
It was a case for hurry.' And he followed the messenger as he was,
in his slippers and skull-cap.

The inn was not thirty yards away, but the messenger did not stop
there; he went in at one door and out by another into the court,
and then led the way by a flight of steps beside the stable, to the
loft where the mountebank lay sick. If Doctor Desprez were to live
a thousand years, he would never forget his arrival in that room;
for not only was the scene picturesque, but the moment made a date
in his existence. We reckon our lives, I hardly know why, from the
date of our first sorry appearance in society, as if from a first
humiliation; for no actor can come upon the stage with a worse
grace. Not to go further back, which would be judged too curious,
there are subsequently many moving and decisive accidents in the
lives of all, which would make as logical a period as this of
birth. And here, for instance, Doctor Desprez, a man past forty,
who had made what is called a failure in life, and was moreover
married, found himself at a new point of departure when he opened
the door of the loft above Tentaillon's stable,

It was a large place, lighted only by a single candle set upon the
floor. The mountebank lay on his back upon a pallet; a large man,
with a Quixotic nose inflamed with drinking. Madame Tentaillon
stooped over him, applying a hot water and mustard embrocation to
his feet; and on a chair close by sat a little fellow of eleven or
twelve, with his feet dangling. These three were the only
occupants, except the shadows. But the shadows were a company in
themselves; the extent of the room exaggerated them to a gigantic
size, and from the low position of the candle the light struck
upwards and produced deformed foreshortenings. The mountebank's
profile was enlarged upon the wall in caricature, and it was
strange to see his nose shorten and lengthen as the flame was blown
about by draughts. As for Madame Tentaillon, her shadow was no
more than a gross hump of shoulders, with now and again a
hemisphere of head. The chair legs were spindled out as long as
stilts, and