Walberg, staggering from his sleep, entered the room,--the
object before him was enough. Ines had only strength left to point to
it. The wretched father rushed out in quest of medical aid, which he was
obliged to solicit gratuitously, and in bad Spanish, while his accents
betrayed him at every door he knocked at,--and closed them against him
as a foreigner and a heretic. At length a barber-surgeon (for the
professions were united in Seville) consented, with many a yawn, to
attend him, and came duly armed with lint and styptics. The distance was
short, and he was soon by the bed of the young sufferer. The parents
observed, with consternation unspeakable, the languid looks of
recognition, the ghastly smile of consciousness, that Everhard viewed
him with, as he approached the bed; and when he had succeeded in
stopping the hæmorrhage, and bound up the arms, a whisper passed between
him and the patient, and the latter raised his bloodless hand to his
lips, and uttered, “Remember our bargain.” As the man retired, Walberg
followed, and demanded to know the meaning of the words he had heard.
Walberg was a German, and choleric--the surgeon was a Spaniard, and
cool. “I shall tell you to-morrow, Senhor,” said he, putting up his
instruments,--“in the mean time be assured of my gratuitous attendance
on your son, and of his certain recovery. We deem you heretics in
Seville, but that youth is enough to canonize the whole family, and
cover a multitude of sins.” And with these words he departed. The next
day he attended Everhard, and so for several, till he was completely
recovered, always refusing the slightest remuneration, till the father,
whom misery had made suspicious of every thing and nothing, watched at
the door, and heard the horrible secret. He did not disclose it to his
wife,--but from that hour, it was observed that his gloom became more
intense, and the communications he used to hold with his family, on the
subject of their distress, and the modes of evading it by hourly
expedients, utterly and finally ceased.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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