Honore de Balzac: The Country Doctor

5. CHAPTER V: ELEGIES (continued)

The letter dropped from Genestas' hands; it was some time before he could read any more.

"Every one is in consternation. The trouble is all the greater because it came as a sudden shock. It was so unexpected. M. Benassis seemed perfectly well the day before; there was not a sign of ill-health about him. Only the day before yesterday he went to see all his patients, even those who lived farthest away; it was as if he had known what was going to happen; and he spoke to every one whom he met, saying, 'Good-bye, my friends,' each time. Towards five o'clock he came back just as usual to have dinner with me. He was tired; Jacquotte noticed the purplish flush on his face, but the weather was so very cold that she would not get ready a warm foot-bath for him, as she usually did when she saw that the blood had gone to his head. So she has been wailing, poor thing, through her tears for these two days past, 'If I had ONLY given him a foot-bath, he would be living now!'

"M Benassis was hungry; he made a good dinner. I thought that he was in higher spirits than usual; we both of us laughed a great deal, I had never seen him laugh so much before. After dinner, towards seven o'clock, a man came with a message from Saint Laurent du Pont; it was a serious case, and M. Benassis was urgently needed. He said to me, 'I shall have to go, though I never care to set out on horseback when I have hardly digested my dinner, more especially when it is as cold as this. It is enough to kill a man!'

"For all that, he went. At nine o'clock the postman Goguelat, brought a letter for M. Benassis. Jacquotte was tired out, for it was her washing-day. She gave me the letter and went off to bed. She begged me to keep a good fire in our bedroom, and to have some tea ready for M. Benassis when he came in, for I am still sleeping in the little cot- bed in his room. I raked out the fire in the salon, and went upstairs to wait for my good friend. I looked at the letter, out of curiosity, before I laid it on the chimney- piece, and noticed the handwriting and the postmark. It came from Paris, and I think it was a lady's hand. I am telling you about it because of things that happened afterwards.