ARG. What? TOI. If I were you, I should have it cut off on the spot. ARG. Why? TOI. Don’t you see that it attracts all the nourishment to itself, and hinders this side from growing? ARG. May be; but I have need of my arm. TOI. You have also a right eye that I would have plucked out if I were in your place. ARG. My right eye plucked out? TOI. Don’t you see that it interferes with the other, and robs it of its nourishment? Believe me; have it plucked out as soon as possible; you will see all the clearer with the left eye. ARG. There is no need to hurry. TOI. Good-bye. I am sorry to leave you so soon, but I must assist at a grand consultation which is to take place about a man who died yesterday. ARG. About a man who died yesterday? TOI. Yes, that we may consider and see what ought to have been done to cure him. Good-bye. ARG. You know that patients do not use ceremony. SCENE XV.—ARGAN, BÉRALDE. BER. Upon my word, this doctor seems to be a very clever man. ARG. Yes, but he goes a little too fast. BER. All great doctors do so. ARG. Cut off my arm and pluck out my eye, so that the other may be better. I had rather that it were not better. A nice operation indeed, to make me at once one-eyed and one-armed. SCENE XVI.—ARGAN, BÉRALDE, TOINETTE. TOI. (_pretending to speak to somebody_). Come, come, I am your servant; I’m in no joking humour. ARG. What is the matter? TOI. Your doctor, forsooth, who wanted to feel my pulse! ARG. Just imagine; and that, too, at fourscore and ten years of age. BER. Now, I say, brother, since you have quarrelled with Mr. Purgon, won’t you give me leave to speak of the match which is proposed for my niece? ARG. No, brother; I will put her in a convent, since she has rebelled against me. I see plainly that there is some love business at the bottom of it all, and I have discovered a certain secret interview which they don’t suspect me to know anything about. BER. Well, brother, and suppose there were some little inclination, where could the harm be? Would it be so criminal when it all tends to what is honourable—marriage? ARG. Be that as it may, she will be a nun. I have made up my mind. BER. You intend to please somebody by so doing. ARG. I understand what you mean. You always come back to that, and my wife is very much in your way. BER. Well, yes, brother; since I must speak out, it is your wife I mean; for I can no more bear with your infatuation about doctors than with your infatuation about your wife, and see you run headlong into every snare she lays for you. TOI. Ah! Sir, don’t talk so of mistress. She is a person against whom there is nothing to be said; a woman without deceit, and who loves master—ah! who loves him.... I can’t express how much. ARG. (_to_ BÉRALDE). Just ask her all the caresses she lavishes for me. TOI. Yes, indeed! ARG. And all the uneasiness my sickness causes her. TOI. Certainly. ARG. And the care and trouble she takes about me.