The cardinal's order was pressing; Guenaud quickly obeyed it. He found his patient stretched on his bed, his legs swelled, his face livid, and his stomach collapsed. Mazarin had a severe attack of gout. He suffered tortures with the impatience of a man who has not been accustomed to resistances. On seeing Guenaud: "Ah!" said he; "now I am saved!"
Guenaud was a very learned and circumspect man, who stood in no need of the critiques of Boileau to obtain a reputation. When facing a disease, if it were personified in a king, he treated the patient as a Turk treats a Moor. He did not, therefore, reply to Mazarin as the minister expected: "Here is the doctor; good-bye disease!" On the contrary, on examining his patient, with a very serious air: "Oh! oh!" said he.
"Eh! what! Guenaud! How you look at me!"
"I look as I should on seeing your complaint, my lord; it is a very dangerous one."
"The gout--oh! yes, the gout."
"With complications, my lord."
Mazarin raised himself upon his elbow, and, questioning by look and gesture: "What do you mean by that? Am I worse than I believe myself to be?"
"My lord," said Guenaud, seating himself beside the bed; "your eminence has worked very hard during your life; your eminence has suffered much."
"But I am not old, I fancy. The late M. de Richelieu was but seventeen months younger than I am when he died, and died of a mortal disease. I am young, Guenaud: remember, I am scarcely fifty-two."
"Oh! my lord, you are much more than that. How long did the Fronde last?"
"For what purpose do you put such a question to me?"
"For a medical calculation, monseigneur."
"Well, some ten years--off and on."
"Very well; be kind enough to reckon every year of the Fronde as three years--that makes thirty; now twenty and fifty-two makes seventy-two years. You are seventy-two, my lord; and that is a great age."
Whilst saying this, he felt the pulse of his patient. This pulse was full of such fatal indications, that the physician continued, notwithstanding the interruptions of the patient: "Put down the years of the Fronde at four each, and you have lived eighty-two years."
"Are you speaking seriously, Guenaud?"
"Alas! yes, monseigneur."
"You take a roundabout way, then, to inform me that I am very ill?"
"Ma foi! yes, my lord, and with a man of the mind and courage of your eminence, it ought not to be necessary to do so."