The Erckmann-Chatrian MEGAPACK ®. Emile Erckmann

with silver buckles. He was just with his hand upon the top of the cask, with an air of inexpressible satisfaction beaming upon his ruddy features, and his eyes glowing in profile, from the reflection of the fire, like a couple of watch-glasses.

      His wife, the worthy Marie Lagoutte, her spare figure draped in voluminous folds, her long and sallow face like a skin of chamois leather, was playing at cards with two servants who were gravely seated on straight-backed arm-chairs. Certain small split pegs were seated astride across the nose of the old woman and that of another player, whilst the third was significantly and cunningly winking his eye and seeming to enjoy seeing them victimised upon these new Caudine Forks.

      “How many cards?” he was asking.

      “Two,” answered the old woman.

      “And you, Christian?”

      “Two.”

      “Aha! now I have got you, then. Cut the king—now the ace—here’s one, here’s another. Another peg, mother! This will teach you once more not to brag about French games.”

      “Monsieur Christian, you don’t treat the fair sex with proper respect.”

      “At cards you respect nobody.”

      “But you see I have no room left!”

      “Pooh, on a nose like yours there’s always room for more!”

      At that moment Sperver cried—

      “Mates, here I am!”

      “Ha! Gideon, back already?”

      Marie Lagoutte shook off her numerous pegs with a jerk of her head. The big butler drank off his glass. Everybody turned our way.

      “Is monseigneur better?”

      The butler answered with a doubtful ejaculation.

      “Is he just the same?”

      “Much about,” answered Marie Lagoutte, who never took her eyes off me.

      Sperver noticed this.

      “Let me introduce to you my foster-son, Doctor Fritz, from the Black Forest,” he answered proudly. “Now we shall see a change, Master Tobie. Now that Fritz has come the abominable fits will be put an end to. If I had but been listened to earlier—but better late than never.”

      Marie Lagoutte was still watching us, and her scrutiny seemed satisfactory, for, addressing the major-domo, she said—

      “Now, Monsieur Offenloch, hand the doctor a chair; move about a little, do! There you stand with your mouth wide open, just like a fish. Ah, sir, these Germans!”

      And the good man, jumping up as if moved by a spring, came to take off my cloak.

      “Permit me, sir.”

      “You are very kind, my dear lady.”

      “Give it to me. What terrible weather! Ah, monsieur, what a dreadful country this is!”

      “So monseigneur is neither better nor worse,” said Sperver, shaking the snow off his cap; “we are not too late, then. Ho, Kasper! Kasper!”

      A little man, who had one shoulder higher than the other, and his face spotted with innumerable freckles, came out of the chimney corner.

      “Here I am!”

      “Very good; now get ready for this gentleman the bedroom at the end of the long gallery—Hugh’s room; you know which I mean.”

      “Yes, Sperver, in a minute.”

      “And you will take with you, as you go, the doctor’s knapsack. Knapwurst will give it you. As for supper—”

      “Never you mind. That is my business.”

      “Very well, then. I will depend upon you.”

      The little man went out, and Gideon, after taking off his cape, left us to go and inform the young countess of my arrival.

      I was rather overpowered with the attentions of Marie Lagoutte.

      “Give up that place of yours, Sébalt,” she cried to the kennel-keeper. “You are roasted enough by this time. Sit near the fire, monsieur le docteur; you must have very cold feet. Stretch out your legs; that’s the way.”

      Then, holding out her snuff-box to me—

      “Do you take snuff?”

      “No, dear madam, with many thanks.”

      “That is a pity,” she answered, filling both nostrils. “It is the most delightful habit.”

      She slipped her snuff-box back into her apron pocket, and went on—

      “You are come not a bit too soon. Monseigneur had his second attack yesterday; it was an awful attack, was it not, Monsieur Offenloch?”

      “Furious indeed,” answered the head butler gravely.

      “It is not surprising,” she continued, “when a man takes no nourishment. Fancy, monsieur, that for two days he has never tasted broth!”

      “Nor a glass of wine,” added the major-domo, crossing his hands over his portly, well-lined person.

      As it seemed expected of me, I expressed my surprise, on which Tobias Offenloch came to sit at my right hand, and said—

      “Doctor, take my advice; order him a bottle a day of Marcobrunner.”

      “And,” chimed in Marie Lagoutte, “a wing of a chicken at every meal. The poor man is frightfully thin.”

      “We have got Marcobrunner sixty years in bottle,” added the major-domo, “for it is a mistake of Madame Offenloch’s to suppose that the French drank it all. And you had better order, while you are about it, now and then, a good bottle of Johannisberg. That is the best wine to set a man up again.”

      “Time was,” remarked the master of the hounds in a dismal voice—“time was when monseigneur hunted twice a week; then he was well; when he left off hunting, then he fell ill.”

      “Of course it could not be otherwise,” observed Marie Lagoutte. “The open air gives you an appetite. The doctor had better order him to hunt three times a week to make up for lost time.”

      “Two would be enough,” replied the man of dogs with the same gravity; “quite enough. The hounds must have their rest. Dogs have just as much right to rest as we have.”

      There was a few moments’ silence, during which I could hear the wind beating against the window-panes, and rush, sighing and wailing, through the loopholes into the towers.

      Sébalt sat with legs across, and his elbow resting on his knee, gazing into the fire with unspeakable dolefulness. Marie Lagoutte, after having refreshed herself with a fresh pinch, was settling her snuff into shape in its box, while I sat thinking on the strange habit people indulge in of pressing their advice upon those who don’t want it.

      At this moment the major-domo rose.

      “Will you have a glass of wine, doctor?” said he, leaning over the back of my arm-chair.

      “Thank you, but I never drink before seeing a patient.”

      “What! not even one little glass?”

      “Not the smallest glass you could offer me.”

      He opened his eyes wide and looked with astonishment at his wife.

      “The doctor is right,” she said. “I am quite of his opinion. I prefer to drink with my meat, and to take a glass of cognac afterwards. That is what the ladies do in France. Cognac is more fashionable than kirschwasser!”

      Marie Lagoutte had hardly finished with her dissertation when Sperver opened the door quietly and beckoned me to follow him.

      I bowed to the “honourable company,” and as I was entering