a spinal affection demand great care. Her lymph
is inspissated. She wants a change of air. She ought to be sent either
to the waters of Bareges or to the waters of Plombieres."

"All right, doctor."

You allow your wife to go to Plombieres; but she goes there because
Captain Charles is quartered in the Vosges. She returns in capital
health and the waters of Plombieres have done wonders for her. She has
written to you every day, she has lavished upon you from a distance
every possible caress. The danger of a spinal affection has utterly
disappeared.

There is extant a little pamphlet, whose publication was prompted
doubtless by hate. It was published in Holland, and it contains some
very curious details of the manner in which Madame de Maintenon entered
into an understanding with Fagon, for the purposes of controlling
Louis XIV. Well, some morning your doctor will threaten you, as Fagon
threatened his master, with a fit of apoplexy, if you do not diet
yourself. This witty work of satire, doubtless the production of some
courtier, entitled "Madame de Saint Tron," has been interpreted by the
modern author who has become proverbial as "the young doctor." But his
delightful sketch is very much superior to the work whose title I
cite for the benefit of the book-lovers, and we have great pleasure in
acknowledging that the work of our clever contemporary has prevented us,
out of regard for the glory of the seventeenth century, from publishing
the fragment of the old pamphlet.

Very frequently a doctor becomes duped by the judicious manoeuvres of a
young and delicate wife, and comes to you with the announcement:

"Sir, I would not wish to alarm madame with regard to her condition;
but I will advise you, if you value her health, to keep her in perfect
tranquillity. The irritation at this moment seems to threaten the chest,
and we must gain control of it; there is need of rest for her, perfect
rest; the least agitation might change the seat of the malady. At this
crisis, the prospect of bearing a child would be fatal to her."

"But, doctor--"

"Ah, yes! I know that!"

He laughs and leaves the house.

Like the rod of Moses, the doctor's mandate makes and unmakes
generations. The doctor will restore you to your marriage bed with the
same arguments that he used in debarring you. He treats your wife for
complaints which she has not, in order to cure her of those which she
has, and all the while you have no idea of it; for