"At the time that this practice was becoming general, my worthy friend and landlord, Monsieur le Docteur, was smitten with the desire of sucking his patients' blood--not personally, but by proxy; so that of all the words that the French Academy permit the nation to make use of, and which, when I left them, consisted of thirty-two thousand seven hundred and sixty one and a-half[17], the word most frequently in the mouth of Monsieur le Docteur was _sangsue_. --------------- [Footnote 17: He afterwards explained that he had been admitted once to the making of a new word by the French Academy, and left it in the middle.] --------------- "But before I proceed farther, I must briefly tell you, what sort of a machine a French doctor in a country town is. It is a thing that walks upon two legs, or trots upon four, as occasion serves; that knows nothing of medicine, a good deal of surgery, and will go ten miles for two shillings. My worthy friend, then, Monsieur le Docteur ----, resided at Quimper, in La Basse Bretagne. His fame was high, and not without cause, so that if a man fell off a tree and broke his neck within fifteen miles of Quimper, Monsieur le Docteur was sure to be in at the death. "When last I was in Brittany, I spent six weeks very pleasantly with the Doctor and his family, and, as he was a good horseman and a pleasant companion, I accompanied him more than once when he rode to visit some country patients. Thus I was conducted one day to the little village of Kerethnac, some ten miles from Quimper, where my friend had plenty of occasions to exercise his curative propensities. One man had broken his leg, another had dislocated his wrist, and a third had a sore throat. To this last, without loss of time, the Doctor ordered the application of twenty leeches, seemingly sorry that he could not prescribe them for the others also; and having dispatched his business as quickly as possible, we remounted our horses and returned to Quimper. The road was a pleasant one, and two days after, when Monsieur le Docteur proposed to revisit Kerethnac, I was not unwilling to accompany him. On arriving at our journey's end, I went into all the huts with my friend. Huts they were, indeed,--a combination of pig-sty, cow-house, and bedchamber. But to proceed. After having looked at the broken leg, and ordered some camphorated spirit for the dislocated wrist, the Doctor entered the house of his sore-throated patient, the first piece of whose goods and chattels that presented itself being his wife. "'Well, my good woman,' said the Doctor, 'how is your husband to-day?--better, no doubt.' "'O yes, surely,' answered the woman. 'He is as well as ever, and gone to the field.' "'I thought so,' continued Monsieur le Docteur. 'The leeches have cured him! Wonderful effect they have! You got the leeches, of course.' "'Oh, yes, Monsieur le Docteur, they did him a deal of good, though he could not take them all.'