Hem, hem, ahem!"--having immediate recourse to his Carolus' snuff-box, which in the first instance he most politely handed to Monsieur Bourreau. And here the name of Surgeon Leach being announced, the two surgeons with due formality were conducted by the medical baronet to the sick man's chamber.
They found their patient suffering under much bodily pain, attended also with inflammation and a considerable degree of fever. They alternately felt his pulse, holding forth their watches, upon which they intently gazed; then looked at each other grave and portentous as the visages of two undertakers in their vocation, and most sadly shook their sapient sconces.
However, it was not long before a very decided difference of opinion arose between the knights of the lance--to wit, M. Bourreau was for the immediate extraction of the ball, insisting most strenuously that such an operation was unavoidably necessary, thus to effect the enlargement of the wound, in order finally to extract the ball, which was the immediate and important consideration of the case, and thus finally to facilitate the cure; but at the same time with candour he acknowledged that the operation would not be unattended with pain. Meanwhile Mr. Leach was for leaving the bullet gradually to work out its own tranquil way in the quiet lapse of years and time, which result, he insisted pertinaciously, he had known to be the case in numerous instances, where bullets have remained innocuously lodged in several parts of the human body, until eventually, after a long lapse of years, they have worked forth a passage to the surface, and have been easily extracted. And other cases he knew, where individuals have retained with impunity bullets within their bodies, from a gun-shot or pistol wound, even to the closing hour of a protracted life.
Mr. Leach was likewise too of opinion that, as the wound was placed upon a joint, assuredly, that both knife and forceps should be put under due restraint, nor should any more opening be made than what was quite absolutely and imperatively necessary to meet the circumstances of the case.
It was considered incumbent by the duke, from this most serious difference of opinion, that a third surgeon should instantly be called in as umpire, and that his opinion in this intended consultation should be absolute.