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The favourite of the muses, exasperated at this vexatious perseverance of the painter, who he imagined had come to tease and insult him, "I would," said he, "sacrifice a cock to Esculapius, were I assured that any person had been taken up for extirpating such a troublesome Goth as you are from the face of the earth.
Robespierre knew this, and acted upon it, as you shall hear." The Abbe then related to us the story I have detailed above, verbatim, as he had it from the son of Esculapius, who himself confirmed it afterwards in a conversation with the Abbe in our presence.
"The whole truth shall be told!" said Paula sternly and firmly. "Of course," replied Orion. Then turning to the physician, he added: "I would request you, worthy Esculapius, to leave me and my cousin together for a few minutes. I want to give her a word of counsel which will certainly be to her advantage."
The bedding of his couch seemed clean and comfortable, and his aged attendant closed the door of the bed, for it had no curtain, after a few words of Gaelic, from which Waverley gathered that he exhorted him to repose. So behold our hero for a second time the patient of a Highland Esculapius, but in a situation much more uncomfortable than when he was the guest of the worthy Tomanrait.
After this ceremony was duly performed, the old Esculapius let his patient's blood with a cupping-glass with great dexterity, and proceeded, muttering all the while to himself in Gaelic, to boil on the fire certain herbs, with which he compounded an embrocation.
Similar circumstances are related of his Temple at Triccae, in Thessaly, where Esculapius was held in great veneration at a very early period; there appears also to have been another such temple either at or near Athens, where we must look for the scene of the ridiculous cure which Aristophanes makes Aesculapius to perform on the blind god of riches.
But suppose that it is your unprecedented privilege to possess a wife who is without religious connections, without parents or intimate friends; that you have penetration enough to see through all the tricks by which your wife's lover tries to entrap you; that you still have sufficient love for your fair enemy to resist all the Martons of the earth; that, in fact, you have for your doctor a man who is so celebrated that he has no time to listen to the maunderings of your wife; or that if your Esculapius is madame's vassal, you demand a consultation, and an incorruptible doctor intervenes every time the favorite doctor prescribes a remedy that disquiets you; even in that case, your prospects will scarcely be more brilliant.
Those who are going, claim the doctor in case of accidents. Those who stay, their wives at least, want him for fear of measles; while the disciple of Esculapius, though he knows there will be better cooking if he remain at home, is certain there will be food for fun if he go. It is soon decided the doctor goes. Then the privates share in the pleasure of the day.
The ancient mythology here seems revived; the naiades are placed on the borders of rivers, the nymphs in woods worthy of them, the tombs beneath Elysian shades, and the statue of Esculapius in the middle of an isle, while that of Venus appears to rise out of the waters: Ovid and Virgil might walk in this enchanting spot, and still believe themselves in the Augustan age.
The professional face was unmistakeable: and I knew that the tall pale man, who regarded me with interrogative glance, was a disciple of Esculapius, as certainly as if he had carried his diploma in one hand and his door-plate in the other. He was a man of forty, not ill-featured, though the face was not one that would be termed handsome.
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