Project Gutenberg's The Princess And The Jewel Doctor, by Robert Hichens

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Title: The Princess And The Jewel Doctor
1905

Author: Robert Hichens

Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23413]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by David Widger

THE PRINCESS AND THE JEWEL DOCTOR

By Robert Hichens

Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers

Copyright, 1905

In St. Petersburg society there may be met at the present time a certain
Russian Princess, who is noted for her beauty, for an ugly defect--she
has lost the forefinger of her left hand--and for her extraordinary
attachment to the city of Tunis, where she has spent at least three
months of each year since 1890--the year in which she suffered the
accident that deprived her of a finger. What that accident was, and
why she is so passionately attached to Tunis, nobody in Russia seems to
know, not even her doting husband, who bows to all her caprices. But two
persons could explain the matter--a Tunisian guide named Abdul, and a
rather mysterious individual who follows a humble calling in the Rue
Ben-Ziad, close to the Tunis bazaars. This latter is the Princess's
personal attendant during her yearly visit to Tunis. He accompanies her
everywhere, may be seen in the hall of her hotel when she is at home, on
the box of her carriage when she drives out, close behind her when
she is walking. He is her shadow in Africa. Only when she goes back to
Russia does he return to his profession in the Rue Ben-Ziad.

This is the exact history of the accident which befell the Princess in
1890. In the spring of that year she arrived one night at Tunis. She
had not long been married to an honourable man whom she adored. She was
rich, pretty, and popular. Yet her life was clouded by a great fear
that sometimes made the darkness of night almost intolerable to her. She
dreaded lest the darkness of blindness should come upon her. Both her
mother, now dead, and her grandfather had laboured under this defect.
They had been born with sight, and had become totally blind ere they
reached the age of forty. Princess