German fiction -- Translations into English; Netherlands -- History -- Eighty Years' War, 1568-1648 -- Fiction
On Tuesday afternoon his way led him past the famous Rotterdam cake-shop.
Before the door of the building, made of boards lightly joined together
and decked with mirrors and gay pictures, a stout, pretty woman, in the
bloom of youth, sat in a high arm-chair, pouring rapidly, with remarkable
skill, liquid dough into the hot iron plate, provided with numerous
indentations, that stood just on a level with her comfortably outspread
lap. Her assistant hastily turned with a fork the little cakes, browning
rapidly in the hollows of the iron, and when baked, laid them neatly on
small plates. The waiter prepared them for purchasers by putting a large
piece of yellow butter on the smoking pile. A tempting odor, that only
too vividly recalled former enjoyment, rose from the fireplace, and
Adrian's fingers were already examining the contents of his purse, when
the negro's trumpet sounded and the quack doctor's cart stopped directly
in front of the booth.
The famous Doctor Morpurgo was a fine-looking man, dressed in bright
scarlet, who had a thin, coalblack beard hanging over his breast. His
movements were measured and haughty, the bows and gestures with which he
saluted the assembled crowd, patronizing and affable. After a sufficient
number of curious persons had gathered around his cart, which was stocked
with boxes and vials, he began to address them in broken Dutch, spiced
with numerous foreign words.
He praised the goodness of the Providence which had created the marvel of
human organism. Everything, he said, was arranged and formed wisely and
in the best possible manner, but in one respect nature fared badly in the
presence of adepts.
"Do you know where the error is, ladies and gentlemen?" he asked.
"In the purse," cried a merry barber's clerk, "it grows prematurely thin
every day."
"Right, my son," answered the quack graciously. "But nature also
provides it with the great door from which your answer has come. Your
teeth are a bungling piece of workmanship. They appear with pain, decay
with time, and so long as they last torture those who do not
industriously attend to them. But art will correct nature. See this
box--" and he now began to praise the tooth-powder and cure for toothache
he had invented. Next he passed to the head, and described in vivid
colors, its various pains. But they too were to be cured, people need
only buy his arcanum. It was to be had for a trifle, and whoever bought
it could sweep away every headache, even the worst, as with a broom.
Adrian listened to the famous doctor with mouth wide open. Specially
sweet odors floated over to him from the hot surface of the stove before
the booth, and he would have gladly allowed himself a plate of fresh
cakes. The baker's stout wife even beckoned to him with a spoon, but he
closed his hand around the purse and again turned his eyes towards the
quack, whose cart was now surrounded by men and women buying tinctures
and medicines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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