In five minutes Traverse was in the office of the hotel, inquiring for
a waiter to show him up into 555.
One was ordered to attend him, who led the way up several flights of
stairs and around divers galleries, until he opened a door and ushered
the doctor immediately into the sick room.
There was a little, old, dried-up Frenchman in a blue night-cap,
extended on a bed in the middle of the room and covered with a white
counterpane that clung close to his rigid form as to a corpse.
And there was a little, old, dried-up Frenchwoman in a brown merino
gown and a high-crowned muslin cap who hopped and chattered about the
bed like a frightened magpie.
"Ou! Monsieur le Docteur!" she screamed, jumping at Traverse in a way
to make him start back; "Ou, Monsieur le Docteur, I am very happy you
to see! Voilà mon frère! Behold my brother! He is ill! He is verra ill!
He is dead! He is verra dead!"
"I hope not," said Traverse, approaching the bed.
"Voilà, behold! Mon dieu, he is verra still! He is verra cold! He is
verra dead! What can you, mon frère, my brother to save?"
"Be composed, madam, if you please, and allow me to examine my
patient," said Traverse.
"Ma foi! I know not what you speak 'compose.' What can you my brother
to save?"
"Much, I hope, madam, but you must leave me to examine my patient and
not interrupt me," said Traverse, passing his hand over the naked chest
of the sick man.
"Mon Dieu! I know not 'exam' and 'interrupt'! and I know not what can
you mon frère to save!"
"If you don't hush parley-vooing, the doctor can do nothink, mum," said
the waiter, in a respectful tone.
Traverse found his patient in a bad condition--in a stupor, if not in a
state of positive insensibility. The surface of his body was cold as
ice, and apparently without the least vitality. If he was not, as his
sister had expressed it, "very dead," he was certainly "next to it."
By close questioning, and by putting his questions in various forms,
the doctor learned from the chattering little magpie of a Frenchwoman
that the patient had been ill for nine days; that he had been under the
care of Monsieur le Doctor Cartiere; that there had been a consultation
of physicians; that they had prescribed for him and given him over:
that le Docteur Cartiere still attended him, but was at this instant in
attendance as accoucheur to a lady in extreme danger, whom he could not
leave; but Doctor Cartiere had directed them, in his unavoidable
absence, to call in the skilful, the talented, the soon to be
illustrious young Docteur Rocque, who was also near at hand.