peccable.

His coat hung upon the back of a chair, and his darling flageolet had
fallen out of the pocket and lay upon the floor. Argyll picked it up and
held it in his hand a while, looking upon it with a little Contempt, and
yet with some kindness.

"Fancy that!" he said more to himself than to the apothecary; "the poor
fellow must have his flageloet with him even upon an affair of
this kind. It beats all! My dear man of moods! my good vagabond!
my windlestraw of circumstance! constant only to one ideal--the
unattainable perfection in a kind of roguish art. To play a perfect
tune in the right spirit he would sacrifice everything, and yet drift
carelessly into innumerable disgraces for mere lack of will to lift a
hand. I daresay sometimes Jean is in the rights of it after all--his
gifts have been his curse; wanting his skill of this simple instrument
that was for ever to himself and others an intoxication, and wanting his
outward pleasing form, he had been a good man to the very marrow. A good
man! H'm! Ay! and doubtless an uninteresting one. Doctor! doctor! have
you any herb for the eyesight?"

"Does your Grace have a dimness? I know a lotion--"

"Dimness! faith! it is the common disease, and I suffer it with the
rest. Sometimes I cannot see the length of my nose."

"The stomach, your Grace; just the stomach," cried the poor leech. "My
own secret preparation--"

"Your own secret preparation, doctor, will not, I am sure, touch the
root of this complaint or the devil himself is in it. I can still
see--even at my age--the deer on Tom-a-chrochair, and read the scurviest
letters my enemies send me, but my trouble is that I cannot understand
the flageolet."

"The flageolet, your Grace," said MacIver bewildered. "I thought you
spoke of your eyesight."

"And so I did. I cannot see through the mysteries of things; I cannot
understand why man should come into the world with fingers so apt to
fankle that he cannot play the finest tunes all the time and in the best
of manners. These, however, are but idle speculations, beyond the noble
jurisdiction of the chymist. And so you think our patient will make a
good recovery?"

"With care, your Grace; and the constant use of my styptic, a most
elegant nostrum, your Grace, that has done wonders in the case of a
widow up the glen."

"This folly of a thing they call one's honour," said the Duke, "has made
a great deal of profitable trade for your profession?"

"I have no cau