The Second Life of Doctor Albin

by Raoul Gineste

  “You didn’t want me when I was pretty,” she observed, “and now I’m a scarecrow, now I no longer have anything, and perhaps can’t even earn a living any longer, how can you expect me not to weep, thinking that it will soon be necessary for us to separate again.”

  “I left you,” he replied, gravely, “because you were rich and pretty and I thought you were able to do without my help. Now that you’re appealing to me for help; now, above all, that your misfortune, more than anything else, might enable you to become an honest woman by obliging you to work, although I can’t engage my entire future, if you swear to me never to get in the way of my projects, whatever they may be, if you promise to do as I ask blindly, I’m ready to extend my hand to you again. We’ll earn our living as best we can.”

  An immense joy transfigured her. “I swear to you,” she cried, throwing herself into his arms.

  “You know,” she added, in a curt, dull and resolute voice that that penetrated his heart like a sharp spike, “if you hadn’t said that to me, I would have thrown myself in the river tonight.”

  A few hours later, Rose Gontran, completely reestablished, asked for the annulment of her engagement. The director of the Folies Nouvelles refrained from raising the slightest obstacle. Fortunately for her, he owed her a considerable sum, which permitted her to pay her rent and acquit all her debts.

  The first thing to do was to abandon the costly apartment, sell the expensive furniture, now unnecessary and collect the debris that the thieves had left. She assembled thus about four thousand francs.

  What were they going to do?

  Mariette—for she demanded that from now on, he would no longer call her Rose Gontran—wanted to buy a small stationer’s shop.

  He saw nothing inconvenient in that. She would tend the shop, he would go to work or would do such work as he found at home; they would thus resume the communal life of old, the obscure life of calm and wellbeing that she had always regretted. Why hadn’t he proposed that before? What could have prevented him? Could he not act as he wished, pursuing all his projects without her raising the slightest obstacle, without her even seeking to penetrate the mystery with which he enveloped himself?

  They toured various quarters in quest of premises. A good opportunity having come up in the Rue de Belleville, they concluded the bargain. The foundation was already laid, and he completed it in an intelligent fashion by adding the sale of newspapers, and put a notice in the window:

  Scientific and literary works, chemical analyses, translations of foreign works, redactions of pamphlets and prospectuses. Apply within.

  After a few weeks, the encyclopedic stationer had enough work no longer to have to seek any outside. A former pork-butcher, his neighbor, aiming for academic palms, having had him write a pamphlet on The Role of Tinned Goods in Military Alimentation, the success of which had surpassed all expectations, immediately ordered a host of opuscules. It was thus that he published successively, under the name of the ambitious sausage-merchant: A Rational Manner of Salting and Smoking Meat, Hygiene in the Breeding of Pigs, Let’s Make Lard French, Italian Swine and Gallic Butchery and Long Live Bayonne and Down With York.

  Two or three maniacs of that sort, and the future was assured.

  Mariette became cheerful again and set to work courageously; her friend had demonstrated to her from the start that veritable commercial skill consisted of never cheating the clients, having merchandise of all qualities and always selling items at their true value. She had taken advantage of this advice, and customers did not take long to flock into the small shop.

  The perpetual comings and goings, the conversations she willingly exchanged with the regulars, the respect that her past reputation earned her—for she had ended up being recognized—and the sympathies that her affable manners attracted to her lent powerful assistance to the vanquishing of her chagrin; one would have sworn that she had been in commerce all her life.

  Her friend, shut away in a first floor room, drafted his commissions or ripened his projects.

  Soon, there was enough money to buy chemical products and a few accessories necessary to his experiments. Mariette never asked him the reason for those relatively expensive purchases or worried about what he was doing.

  In reality, she did not hinder him at all; he had, therefore, taken the best course.

  Chapter XXIII

  Since Charles Balin had been able to analyze coldly the unforeseen situation created by the loss of his fortune, he had traced a program whose broad lines would first assure his material existence, which never losing sight of his scientific projects, and then to earn the sum of money necessary to the completion and the publication of his work. In order for him to be able to do that in advantageous conditions, however, it was indispensable that he should be in possession of official qualifications. The miserable failure and unfortunate consequences of his first attempt would have demonstrated that necessity, if he had not already been convinced of the fact.

  His plan, prior to the theft at the Crédit International, had been to purchase an American, Belgian or Italian doctoral diploma, and, furnished with that parchment, to obtain the favor, easily done, of taking the examinations for the French doctorate. Thus placed, he would have sufficient qualifications to act fruitfully.

  Events having disrupted those plans, instead of the few months that he would have needed, he might well have to spend years becoming an official doctor again. His situation, nevertheless, was beginning to improve. Mariette’s commerce, increasingly prosperous, brought in a good income; his personal endeavors had already permitted him to make savings; another few thousand francs, and the University of Liège or Pisa would sing the dignus est intrare in his honor.

  Hazard gave him the chance to earn them more rapidly. Passing one day in front of the shop of the foul-mouthed second hand clothes dealer from which he had once bought his hat, the curiosity of an old practitioner pushed him to discover whether the diabetic was still alive. He went into the wretched shop.

  The obese man was still there; his condition even seemed to have improved.

  “What do you desire?” he asked, on seeing him enter.

  “To enquire after your health, Monsieur.”

  “Bah!” grunted the shopkeeper, still as peevish. “But I’m not ill.”

  “You have been, at least, and gravely, if I remember correctly.”

  “Perhaps,” muttered the amiable broker. “What does it have to do with you?”

  “I can see that you don’t recognize me.”

  “Wait a minute,” said the merchant.

  “Have you forgotten the man in the check suit who gave you a consultation two and a half years ago?”

  “The bone-setter!” cried the second-hand dealer, seized with a veritable joy. “I recognize you. Sit down, I beg you, and let me express my gratitude. I owe you a big debt—you put me back on my feet.” He rummaged in the drawer of a dresser and pulled out a dirty piece of paper. “Look—do you recognize it? It’s your prescription—I’ve been careful not to lose it. As soon as I feel ill I run to the pharmacist, and a few days later, I’m better.”

  “I’m glad to have been of service to you.”

  “It won’t be said that you’ve come to see me without our clinking glasses.”

  The broker was so persistent that the visitor could not refuse the invitation. They went into a small neighborhood café. As they went past his shop, the stationer pointed it out.

  “That’s where I live now, Monsieur; we’re practically neighbors. When you need newspapers or stationery, you know where to come.”

  “What! It’s you that bought the stationer’s!” exclaimed the second-hand dealer, increasingly delighted. “I can ask you for a consultation, then, if necessary?”

  “I’ll be happy to give you one.”

  “Do you know that, without suspecting it, you sank the doctor who was treating me. The imprudent fellow had told overly curious cousins that I only had two or three months to live. The others no long
er left the house, they thought they’d already inherited. Perhaps you’d have thrown them out? I’m not so stupid. I let them give me a heap of presents and lavish me with care. After a while, when they saw that, instead of taking the train for the turnip field, I was continuing, thanks to your regime, to devour the oysters they bought me, they departed, furious. You should have heard them slandering the doctor—and the friend I told the story to made fun of him. As for me, I couldn’t met him in the street without laughing in his face; he started making long detours in order not to go past the shop, and he ended up leaving the quarter.”

  The scrap merchant introduced his savior to the regulars of the little café, recommended the stationer’s shop loudly, and whispered a few words in their ears.

  After a few days, everyone in the neighborhood knew that the bone-setter who had cured Père Ravin was a stationer in the Rue de Belleville. Consultations began to arrive.

  Mariette, knowing her friend’s value, found it quite natural, and strove with all her might to persuade him to accept retribution. Why should his services not be recognized? The local doctors got paid for their cures, in spite of their blunders!

  After all, Charles Balin said to himself, am I not fundamentally an illustrious healer, and can I not accept two or three francs for advice for which Dr. Albin was paid twenty times as much?

  To the question “How much do I owe you?” he therefore replied: “Whatever you want to give me; you don’t have any obligation; the law doesn’t give me the right to receive a fee.” A few consultants profited from the liberty, but the majority did not depart without leaving their obol.

  Soon, his reputation grew and was propagated.

  A former orderly at the hospital recognized him, told the story of the operation, and claimed that he had made a mockery of all the celebrated surgeons of the hospitals. The stationer, having become a famous bone-setter by public rumor, received visits from all the corners of the quarter, and even the heart of Paris.

  In the beginning, the pharmacists filled his prescriptions, to which they found no grounds for objection, but, on receiving threats from physicians, they were soon obliged to refuse them. The bone-setter then had to advise his patients to go to establishments where he had not been blacklisted—which is to say, those that were outside the quarter. The physicians and pharmacists immediately fell upon him; he was denounced and threatened. It was necessary to surround himself with mystery and, with the aid of the persecution, his renown took on colossal proportions. The qualified doctors, afflicted in their interests, searched everywhere for evidence and witnesses, but the healer, with a remarkable flair, sent suspect patients away or treated them gratuitously, as was his right.

  Unfortunately, a public event arrived, which gave redoubtable weapons to his adversaries.

  A private carriage had tipped over in the Rue de Belleville. The passenger, violently projected on to the sidewalk, was gravely wounded; his left tibia, broken in two, had torn through the skin and was sticking out of the wound. Transported to a pharmacist’s shop, prey to the most intense pain, he called loudly for help that did not come. No local physician was at home! The proposal was made to fetch the bone-setter.

  “Whoever you like,” he begged, “as long as I’m not left in this state any longer and can be taken home.”

  The stationer hastened to come, staunched the blood-flow, reduced the fracture, washed the wound and had the injured man placed in the least painful position.

  Then he waited for one of the physicians who had been summoned to arrive.

  Seeing that no one was coming, and judging that he had to apply a special dressing urgently, he said: “Would you like me to apply a dressing that will allow you to be taken home without danger, Monsieur? Once at home, you can call your usual doctor, and he will do what is necessary.”

  The injured man, already sensibly relieved, urged him to do so. He obtained bandages, wadding, cardboard and plaster and rapidly constructed a plastered apparatus, with the opening indispensable to the future care that the wound required. When the apparatus was complete he dressed the wound meticulously.

  He had scarcely fastened the last pin when one of the physicians who had been summoned arrived.

  “Who reduced the fracture and put on this apparatus?”

  “It was me, Monsieur.”

  “Ah! The bone-setter. That’s a surgical operation: what gave you the audacity and the right to do it?”

  “The urgency there was to do it immediately, and the doubtless involuntary delay in your arrival.”

  “All right,” growled the physician. “We’ll see about that later.” He prepared to take off the dressing.”

  “You mustn’t touch that,” declared the bone-setter.

  “Who’ll stop me?”

  “The injured man, whose precious time you’ll waste performing unnecessary maneuvers.”

  “You’re afraid that I’ll see your stupidities.”

  “The treating surgeon, Dr. P***, whose value you know, I think, will establish them.”

  The impatient victim paid the physician for the unnecessary disturbance, thanked the man who had just alleviated his suffering and asked him to accompany him to his domicile to supervise the care of the transportation.

  Professor P***, alerted in advance by telegram, was waiting for him there. The invalid as put to bed with the greatest precaution, and then Charles Balin briefly put the illustrious surgeon in the picture. The case was very serious; he had thought it necessary to make a plastered apparatus that would permit the injured man to return home without suffering too much. Dr. P*** approved, removed the bandages that were covering the wound and examined it carefully.

  “That’s perfect,” he declared. “You made this dressing yourself, you tell me?”

  “Yes, Monsieur.”

  “All my compliments, my dear colleague; I couldn’t have done better if I’d done it myself. In what quarter do you practice?”

  The bone-setter did not know what to say. “I’m not a physician in the official sense,” he ended up confessing.

  “That’s impossible. Where did you lean to do that?”

  “I’ve been a medical student, and then a hospital orderly.”

  “Are you by any chance the famous orderly of whom I’ve heard talk—the one who did the ligature?”

  “The same.”

  “Well, my friend, I’ll tell you frankly that it’s regrettable that you don’t have a diploma in your pocket. Once again, I couldn’t have done better myself, and my intervention is presently unnecessary” He addressed his rich client: “Monsieur will remake the dressing; I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  “Doctor,” asked the injured man, “do you see any inconvenience in me asking him to be my nurse?”

  “Not only don’t I see any,” replied the eminent operator, “but I urge you enthusiastically to do it.”

  The bone-setter accepted the offer, and cared for the gentleman for more than a month.

  The man, who bore one of the most illustrious names in the French nobility, endowed with a high intelligence, an extensive instruction and a perfect education, had a somewhat timorous nature. Delighted, to begin with, to have as a nurse a companion who could understand and reply to him, he quickly became intrigued, and then alarmed, by the surprising erudition of the Bellevillois stationer.

  “Doctor,” he confided to Professor P*** , one day when his guardian was not present, “I don’t like mystery, and the man who is caring for me is truly too surrounded by it. He’s no more a stationer or an orderly than you or I are chestnut-sellers or street-sweepers.”

  “Why do you think that?” interrogated Dr. P***.

  “Because Monsieur Balin, or, rather, the so-called Monsieur Balin, possesses knowledge and an education such as I’ve rarely encountered, and you know the kind and the worth of my acquaintances.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “He knows Descartes, Kant and Hegel in depth. No question of science, art or literature is foreign to him; he
plays chess better than I do and is polite to the point of letting me win. He knows three or four living languages. He plays Bach and Beethoven like a professional. Finally, you’ve told me yourself that he makes a dressing as well as you do, which is not saying a little! Until now, you’ve been able to respond to me that he was once a medical student, that he has perhaps received a very careful education, and that an incredible series of misfortunes has reduced him to the humble situation he now occupies, but wait—that isn’t all. You know that, having long been a secretary to the ambassador, I know all the chancelleries inside out. Well, a few words escaped here and there have proved to me that that unknown man is aware of certain very serious diplomatic secrets. He knows things that a minister only confides to his night-cap.”

  “Damn!” aid the illustrious professor. “Who can he be?”

  “That’s the catch! At any rate, be certain that he’s only a sham stationer. He’s a man in hiding, a noted nihilist or a disgraced foreign diplomat, unless he’s some defrocked papal nuncio. Anyway, I’m at a loss, and I confess to you that the mysterious fellow frightens me. In spite of the service he’s rendered me, I’ll be glad to see the back of him.”

  “That’s simple enough. You’re out of danger, well on your way to being fully healed—thanks to him, in fact. Give him a generous recompense and send him on his way.”

  “I’ll give him a thousand-franc bill and…”

  “Make it two thousand,” put in the prince of surgery. “He hasn’t stolen them, and wealth has its obligations. With the other two thousand that I’ll demand for my visits, you’ll be getting away lightly.”

  “That’s all right; would you be kind enough to carry out the commission?”

  “With pleasure. He took the two banknotes that the convalescent held out to him. As the stationer had just returned, he said: “Say goodbye to Monsieur de S***, and come downstairs with me; I need to talk to you.”

  Charles Balin and his patient made their reciprocal adieux, and he immediately rejoined Dr. P***, who was waiting for him in the antechamber.