V.
Only a luminous speck at the distance of half a kertz. It is the lamp of the dying -perhaps the dead. Of course, it is the herring-salter’s house; the old woman pointed to it with her finger; no mistake is possible. Through the whistling swishes and the dashing swashes, through the uproar of the tempest, Dr. Trifulgas tramps on with hurried steps. As he advances, the house becomes more distinct, being isolated in the midst of the landscape.
It is very remarkable how much it resembles that of Dr. Trifulgas, the Six-four of Luktrop. The same arrangement of windows, the same little arched door. Dr. Trifulgas hastens on as fast as the gale allows him. The door is ajar; he has but to push it. He pushes it, he enters, and the wind roughly closes it behind him. The dog Hurzof, left outside, howls, with intervals of silence.
Strange! One would have said that Dr. Trifulgas had come back to his own house. And yet he has not wandered; he has not even taken a turning. He is at Val Karnion, not at Luktrop. And yet, here is the same low, vaulted passage, the same wooden staircase, with high banisters, worn away by the constant rubbing of hands.
He ascends. He reaches the landing. Beneath the door a faint light filters through, as in Six-four. Is it a delusion? In the dimness he recognises his room – the yellow sofa, on the right the old chest of pearwood, on the left the brass-bound strong box, in which he intended to deposit his hundred and twenty fretzers. There is his armchair, with the leathern cushions; there is his table, with its twisted legs, and on it, close to the expiring lamp, his pharmacopoeia, open at page 197.
“What is the matter with me?” he murmurs.
What is the matter with him? Fear! His pupils are dilated; his body is contracted, shrivelled; an icy perspiration freezes his skin – every hair stands on end.
But hasten! For want of oil, the lamp expires; and also the dying man! Yes, there is the bed – his own bed – with posts and canopy; as wide as it is long, shut in by heavy curtains. Is it possible that this is the pallet of a wretched herring-salter? With a quaking hand Dr. Trifulgas seizes the curtains; he opens them; he looks in.
The dying man, his head uncovered, is motionless, as if at his last breath. The doctor leans over him…
Ah! what a cry, to which, outside, responds an unearthly howl from the dog.
The dying man is not the herring-salter, Vort Kartif – it is Dr. Trifulgas; it is he, whom congestion has attacked – he himself! Cerebral apoplexy, with sudden accumulation of serosity on the cavities of the brain, with paralysis of the body on the side opposite that of the seat of the lesion.
Yes, it is he, who was sent for, and for whom a hundred and twenty fretzers have been paid. He who, from hardness of heart, refused to attend the herring-salter – he who was dying.
Dr. Trifulgas is like a madman, he knows himself lost. At each moment the symptoms increase. Not only all the functions of the organs slacken, but the lungs and the heart cease to act. And yet he has not quite lost consciousness. What can be done? Bleed! If he hesitates, Dr. Trifulgas is dead. In those days they still bled; and then, as now, medical men cured all those apoplectic patients who were not going to die.
Dr. Trifulgas seizes his case, takes out his lancet, opens a vein in the arm of his double. The blood does not flow. He rubs his chest violently – his own breathing grows slower. He warms his feet with hot bricks – his own grow cold.
Then his double lifts himself, falls back, and draws one last breath. Dr. Trifulgas, notwithstanding all that his science has taught him to do, dies beneath his own hands.
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