Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 383, September 1847

The Count flew to the jeweller. "Here is the ring – let me have the 80,000 rubles." "For this! Pooh! it is paste – not worth so many sous – worth nothing."

Th Jew had two rings exactly alike, with the little difference, that in the one was a real stone, in the other an imitation. By dexterously changing the one for the other, he had contrived to give this beneficial lesson to the young, nobleman, which, it is to be hoped, prevented him, for ever after, from entering the list with sharpers, or trying by unworthy means to over-reach his neighbours.

But to return to what is more generally alluded to as the premier pas– that first success which starts the aspirant on his road to fortune or to fame. It is the barrister and the physician who, amongst all professional men, have most frequently to record some happy chance or adventure that came to the aid of their skill, knowledge, and industry; and of the first brief, or of the first patient, the history is not unfrequently told with singular delight. The story we have to tell, and to which the above remarks and anecdotes may be considered by the reader, if he will, as a sort of preamble, regards the first patient of one who, commencing under great difficulties, rose ultimately to the head of his profession. It belongs to both those classes which, we observed in the commencement, are often mingled indiscriminately together. It has in it something of the marvellous, and yet afforded but a fair opening to genuine talent; it was a first step which the fairies presided over, and yet it was a step on the firm earth, and the first of a series which only true genius and worth could have completed. We are fortunate here in having the words before us of the French author from whom we quote, and we have but to render the anecdote – biography, or romance, whichever it may be – in whatever of the lively style of M. Felix Tournachon our pen can catch, or, under the necessity we are to abridge, we can hope to transfer to our pages.

THE FIRST PATIENT

…He was not then the great doctor that you know him now. At that time he was neither officer of the Legion of Honour, nor professor of the Faculty of Paris. Hardly was he known to some few companions of his studies. The horses that drew his carriage were not then born; the pole of his landau was flourishing green in the forest.

He had obtained his title of physician, and lived in a poor garret – as one says – as if there were any garrets that are rich; and to accomplish this miserable result, to have his painted bed-stead, his table of sham mahogany, two chairs wretchedly stuffed, and his books – what efforts had it not cost him!

He was so poor!

Have you ever known any of these indefatigable young students, born in the humblest ranks, who spend upon their arid labour their ten, their twenty best years of life, without a thought or a care for the pleasures of their age or the passing day? – youthful stoics who march with firm step, and alone, towards an end which, alas! all do not attain!

You have wept at that old drama, that old eternal scene which is recounted every day – yet not so old, it is renewed also every day: – the bare chamber, no better than a loft – the truckle-bed – the broken pitcher – the heap of straw – the sentimental lithographist will not forget the guttering candle stuck into the neck of a bottle. Thus much for the accessories, then for the persons of the scene; a workman, the father who expects to die in the hospital – his four children – always four – who have not broken their fast that day – and the mother is lying-in with her fifth – and it is winter, for these poor people choose winter always for their lying-in.

Oh! all this is very true and piteous – I weep with you at the cry of those suffering children – at the sobs of their mother. Yet there is another poverty which you know not, which it is never intended that you should know. A silent poverty that goes dressed in its black coat, polished, it is true, where polish should not come, and with a slaty hue – produced by the frequent application of ink to its threadbare surface. It is a courageous poverty which resists all aid – even from that fictitious fund, a debt – which dresses itself as you would dress, if your coat were ten years old – which invites no sympathy – which may be seen in the sombre evening stopping a moment before the baker's shop, or the wired windows of the money-changer, but passing on again without a sigh heard. Oh, this poverty in a black coat! And then it enters into its cold and solitary chamber, without even the sad consolation of weeping with another. No Lady Bountiful comes here. In the picture just now described, she would be seen in the background, entering in at the door, her servant behind loaded with raiment and provisions. What should she here? What brings you here, madam? Who could have sent you here? We are rich! If we were poor should we not sell these books? – all these books are ours; madam, we want nothing. Carry your amiable charity elsewhere.

Our young doctor had installed himself in the fifth floor of that historic street, La Cloître-Saint-Mery, – a quarter of the town, poor, disinherited, sad as himself. Where else, indeed, could he have carried his mutilated furniture, – which in other quarters would have only excited distrust? There was he waiting for fortune – not, be it understood, in his bed, but following science laboriously, uninterruptedly. His life was so retired – so modest – so silent, that hardly was he known in the house. On the day of his arrival, he had said to the porter, or rather porteress, "Madam, I am a doctor – if any one should want me." This was all the publicity of the new doctor – his sole announcement, his only advertisement. As his fellow lodgers could gather nothing of him to gratify or excite curiosity – as his unfrequented door was always strictly closed, they soon ceased to concern themselves about him. His name even was forgotten; they simply called him the doctor– and with this title our readers also must be contented, unless their own ingenuity should enable them to discover another.

One night our doctor heard unaccustomed noises in the house, doors slamming, people walking to and fro. Presently some one knocked at his door – verily at his door. What was it? Was the patient come at last – that first patient, so anxiously expected? He was dressed in an instant.

"The Countess is dying!" some one cried through the door. "Come, directly!"

He was at her bedside in a minute.

The Countess! Such was the title given in derision to precisely the poorest and most miserable old woman in the house. She had been at one period of her life in the service of a noble family as femme-de-chambre; and as a woman who had seen something of the great world, she held unqualified strangers at a certain distance, and, to use a common phrase, kept herself to herself. This had procured her the ill-will and ill-opinion of several other old crones inhabiting the same house, who made her the subject of their perpetual scandal. Without doubt, she had poisoned her last master, and could not look a Christian in the face; or at very least she had robbed him. Did you ask for proofs? She had a treasure stitched into a mattress. But she was nearly dying with hunger? Yes – the niggard! She starved herself, she could not spend her treasure.

Monstrous inventions! The poverty of the Countess, as they called her in mockery, was complete. Niggard she was, and had good reason to be so, in order to subsist on the little annuity she had contrived, in the days of her service, to scrape together. For the rest, as we have no wish to disguise the truth, the Countess was by no means an amiable person – bitter and selfish, hostile to all the world, as venomous as her detractors, and without pity for others, as those so often are who have suffered much themselves.

She was now stretched motionless on her bed. The old crones had come about her less from humanity than to discover the secrets of her den, the access to which she had hitherto strictly defended. She held in her left hand a small packet wrapped up in half a pocket-handkerchief, which she clutched convulsively. It was the treasure, they all exclaimed.

Her case was a grave one – a congestion of the brain. The doctor bled her, and then wrote his prescription – his first! The bleeding brought the Countess to herself. When she heard him tell one of the bystanders to go to the chemist and get the potion, —

"Potion!" she exclaimed, laying hold of the paper, "I want no potion – I am not ill. Do you think I have money to pay for your drugs? Go away! – all of you – go!"

She crumpled the prescription in her hand, and was about to throw it on the floor, when something in the paper apparently arrested her. She read the prescription, and, turning to the doctor with a manner quite changed and subdued, asked how much it would cost? She then opened the little packet she had held till then so jealously in her hand. All the old crones stretched forward. A few franc-pieces and some great sous were all the treasure it contained.

That first client, so long looked for, was come at last. Our doctor had his patient – that first patient whom one pets and caresses, to whom one is nurse as well as physician. No uncertain diagnostics there– no retarded visits, no hasty prescriptions. If this one die, it is verily his fault. He devoted himself, body and soul, to the old woman. Certainly the fees would not be very brilliant, nor would the cure spread his reputation very widely. He thought not of this – but save her he must! He absolutely loved this unamiable Countess. He assembled the ban et arrière-ban of science, and armed himself cap-à-pie in knowledge for her defence.

The object of all this solicitude received his attentions, however, with an increasing ill-humour, for each fresh medicine made a fresh demand upon her purse. "How long will this last?" she said one day; "I must go out – I have no more money – I must go out this very day."

"Do not disturb yourself," began the Doctor.

"Not disturb myself!" she interrupted; "easy to say! Instead of giving me these drinks and draughts, give me something that will put a little strength into me – for I must go out."

"Listen to me! remain tranquil a few days" – She turned round from him with impatience.

"To leave your chamber now would be to expose your life. Give me but four days; and if you have no more money, I will charge myself with the medicines."

"You!" cried the Countess, looking up with astonishment.

"And why not me?" said the young Doctor. "You shall return it to me some time – when you will."

"You! who have not often a dinner for yourself!"

"Who says that?" asked the Doctor, blushing involuntarily.

"All the house says it."

"Miserable stuff!" he replied; "will you accept what I offer? If I promise, you may be sure I can perform."

The old woman looked at him with surprise, and at length consented to accept his offer and take his remedies.

The young Doctor hastened to his chamber, shut fast the door, and looked round him, with his arms folded – "What is there here," said he, "that I can sell?"

What he found to sell I do not know. Enough that he supplied the Countess with a sum sufficient to procure her the necessary medicines, and to relieve her from care as to the wants of life for some short time. The case proceeded favourably.

At night, as he was returning from one of those solitary walks in which he was accustomed to exhale his sadness, and also to gather fresh resolution for the struggle he had undertaken with destiny, and was slowly mounting the long, dark, dilapidated staircase that led up to that fifth floor on which he resided, he stumbled over some obstacle, and, on looking closer, found it was the body of a woman lying outstretched upon the stairs. It was the Countess. In spite of solicitations and her own promise, she had gone out; but her strength had failed her. She had fallen, and now lay insensible.

Our young Doctor, braving all malicious interpretations, carried her to his own room, which was the nearest place of refuge, and there, by the aid of some cordials he administered, restored her to her senses. She opened her eyes, looked around her, and understanding in whose room she was, she said, with a scrutinising air, "You are miserably lodged here." It was the only observation his amiable patient made, and she repeated it several times – "You must be miserably off." Even when she had returned to her own room, and he had left her for the night, she still said nothing but – "You are miserably lodged!"

The next morning, when the Doctor visited his patient – and you may be sure his visit was an early one – to his surprise, she was on foot, with sleeves tucked up, sweeping, dusting, and putting to rights her little abode. He was astonished. The shock which she had received the day before, instead of injuring her, had apparently aided in her restoration. She was quite gay.

"You are resolved to kill yourself, then?" said the Doctor.

"I was never better in my life," she answered.

"Do not be too confident," was his reply. "You must keep your room two or three days; and this time," he added, with a smile, "I shall keep guard over you myself."

The Countess consented with a most childlike docility. She would do what he pleased; only yesterday she was obliged to go out – it was absolutely necessary. There was so much gentleness in her altered manner, that the Doctor was disposed to regard this as an alarming symptom in her case.

However, it, was not so. Her health, day by day, improved, and the relation between the patient and her medical attendant became more amicable. She proposed, by way of some return, to assist him in his bachelor housekeeping. It would give her no trouble. An hour in the morning, when he was at his lectures, some of which he still followed; and then she could cook, and she could mend. These offers the young Doctor declined with a sort of alarm. Who but himself could readjust those habiliments, whose strong and whose weak points he so very well knew? What needle could, on this ground, be half so skilful as his own? And cooking! Cooking with him! Cook what? On what? In what? It was in vain that the Countess insisted; he would hear of no such thing. He kept his poverty veiled – it was his sacred territory.

Some few days after the Countess's health might be said to be quite re-established, our young Doctor, on entering his room, was surprised to see a letter lying on his table. Correspondence, for the mere sake of letter-writing, he had quite foregone as a pure waste of time; and he had no relatives who interested themselves in his fate, or who could have any thing to communicate. Nevertheless, there the letter was, addressed duly to himself. He looked at it with an uncomfortable foreboding, assured that it must bring him some new care, or report some strange disaster.

He sat down, and tore open the envelope. He bounded from his seat again with surprise – the letter enclosed fifteen notes of the Bank of France! It is no fairy tale, but simple history; fifteen good notes of one thousand francs each.

Inside the envelope was written: – "This treasure belongs to you as your property. Use it without scruple. The hand that transmits it does but accomplish a legitimate restitution. May the gifts of Fortune conduct you to the Temple of Happiness!" There was no signature.

"Why, it is a dream, a hallucination. Am I growing light-headed?" said the Doctor. But no – it was no dream; there they were – before him – on the little table – those, fifteen miraculous pieces of paper. He turned his head away from them; but when he looked again, there they were – in the same place – in the same order – motionless. I leave you to guess his agitation and his many mingled emotions. From whom could this godsend have come? He read and reread, and turned the letter in every direction. He racked his brain to no purpose to discover his anonymous benefactor. He knew, and was known to, scarcely any one. He strode about his chamber – as well as he could stride in it – inventing the wildest suppositions, which were rejected as soon as made. Suddenly he stopped – struck his forehead as a new thought occurred to him – "Bah!" he cried; "absurd! – impossible! – and yet – "

In a moment he was at the door of the Countess. He paused a moment before he knocked. There was from the landing-place a window at right angles to that of the old woman's apartment and if her window-curtain happened to be drawn aside, which, however, was rarely the case, it was easy to see from it into her room. On the present occasion, not only was the curtain drawn aside, but her window was open, and the Doctor could see this fairy, accused of lavishing banknotes of a thousand francs, kneeling before a wretched stove, striving with her feeble breath to rekindle a few bits of charcoal, on which there stood some indescribable culinary vessel, containing an odious sort of porridge, at once her dinner and her breakfast!

The Doctor shook his head – it could not be the Countess. Yet, completely to satisfy himself, he entered. She gave him her ordinary welcome, neither more nor less – talked, as usual, of her former masters, of the dreadful price of bread, and the wicked scandal of her neighbours. But what most completely set all suspicion at rest was the manner in which she spoke of the debt which she owed him. "I cannot yet repay you what you advanced for my medicines," she said, with all the natural embarrassment of an honest debtor speaking to a creditor. "You will be wanting it, perhaps. Now don't be angry at what I say – one is always in want of one's little money. In a few days I will try and give you at least something on account."

"No," said the Doctor, when he was alone: "I can make nothing of it. Away with all guesses!" He resolved to profit by the good fortune, be the giver whom it might. And he hoped so to manage matters, that if, at a future day, an opportunity for its restoration should occur, he should be able to avail himself of it.

He was soon installed in a more convenient apartment, better furnished, and supplied, above all, with a more abundant library. The young Doctor was radiant with hope. Yet he did not quit his old quarter of the town. It need not be said that he took formal leave of his first patient the Countess.

From this time every thing prospered with him. As it generally happens, the first difficulty conquered, every thing succeeded to his wish. It is the first turn of the wheel which costs so much; once out of the rut, and the carriage rolls. By degrees a little circle of clients was formed, which augmented necessarily every day. His name began to spread. Even from his old residence, where he led so solitary a life, the reputation had followed him of a severe and laborious student, and the cure of the Countess was a known proof of his skill.

Like the generality of the profession, he now divided his day into two portions; the morning he devoted to his visits, the afternoon to the reception of his patients. Returning to his home one day a little before the accustomed hour, he perceived a crowd of persons collected in the street through which he was passing. Perhaps some accident had happened, and his presence might be useful. He made his way, therefore, through the crowd. Yet he nowhere discovered any object which could have collected it. He was merely surrounded on every side by groups engaged in earnest yet subdued conversation. The greater part were women, and both men and women were generally of a mature age, and of that sort of physiognomy which one can only describe as odd– faces ready made for the pencil of the caricaturist. The Doctor, who had no idle time, was about to make his escape, when a general movement took place in the crowd, and he found himself borne along irresistibly with the rest through a large door, which it seemed had just opened, into a spacious hall or amphitheatre. At the upper end was a stage; on the stage a large, strangely-fashioned wheel was placed; and by the side of the wheel stood a little child, dressed in a sky-blue tunic, with a red girdle round its waist, its hair curled and lying upon its shoulders, and a bandage across its eyes. The wheel and the child formed together a sort of mythological representation of Fortune. They were drawing the lottery.

After amusing himself for some time with the novelty of the spectacle, the Doctor began to make serious efforts to extricate himself. As he was threading his way through the crowd, and looking this way and that to detect the easiest mode of egress, he saw, underneath a small gallery at the side of the amphitheatre, in a place which seemed to be reserved for the more favoured or more constant worshippers in that temple of Fortune, a face, the last he should have expected to find there. It was no other than the Countess. She was seated there with all the gravity in the world, inclining with a courteous attention to an old man with gray hairs and smooth brown coat, who was very deferentially addressing her.

Having disengaged himself from the throng, and returned to his own house, this appearance of the Countess recurred very forcibly to his mind. "After all," thought he, "it was the Countess! – it was none but she who sent those notes." The enigma was solved. He had made his fortune in the lottery, and without knowing it. He determined to visit his old patient the next morning.

That very evening, however, he was waited on by the same old gentleman in brown coat and gray hairs, who was seen speaking to her at the lottery. He came with a rueful face, requesting him to visit immediately Madame – , giving the Countess her right name, which it is now too late in our story to introduce. Whatever may have been the case at some previous time, the wheel of Fortune had that day bitterly disappointed her hopes. She had been carried home insensible. The Doctor hastened to her. It was too late. She had been again attacked by a congestion of the brain, which this time had proved fatal.

There appeared no hopes of a complete solution of the enigma.

"Ah!" said the same old gentleman, as he stood moralising by his side, "the same luck never comes twice– she should have tried other numbers."

The Doctor saw immediately that the old gentleman had been in the confidence of the deceased. He questioned him. There was a look of significance, which betrayed plainly that he knew all. He was in fact one of those who earn their subsistence by writing letters for those who are deficient in the skill of penmanship or epistolary composition. He had written the very letter itself; to his pen was owing that sort of copy-book phrase, "May the gifts of Fortune conduct to the Temple of Happiness!" The Doctor had in truth, as he often said when alluding to the subject, made his fortune in the lottery.

We wish we could leave the story here, and let the reader suppose that gratitude alone had induced the old woman to act so generous a part. But the whole truth should be honestly told. There was a mixture of superstition in the case. It was his number that had won the prize, and she considered it, as expressed in the letter which accompanied the notes, in the light of his property. In all countries where a lottery has been long established, the strangest superstitions grow up concerning what are called lucky numbers. In Italy, where this manner of increasing the public revenue is still resorted to, not only is any number which has presented itself under peculiar circumstances sure to be propitious, but there is a well-known book, of acknowledged authority we believe, containing a list of words, with a special number attached to each word, by the aid of which you can convert into a lucky number any extraordinary event which has occurred to you. Let any thing happen of public or private interest – let any thing have been dreamt, or even talked of that was at all surprising, you have only to look in this dictionary for the word which may be supposed to contain the essence of the matter; as, for instance, fire, death, birth – and the number that is opposite that word will assuredly win your fortune. When the Countess first saw the prescription of the young Doctor, she was going to throw it angrily on the floor; but her eye was suddenly riveted by the numbers in it – the numbers of the grains and ozs. in the cabalistic writing – and she felt assured that in these lucky numbers her fortune was made. The first stake she played she played for him; and, singularly enough, she won! But, as the old gentleman in the brown coat observed, the virtue of the prescription was exhausted. She should have sought for numbers from some other quarter; the second trial she made ended in a severe loss, and was the immediate occasion of her death.