"The coffee I prepare," said the doctor, "is an admirable anodyne. Be calm, countess; my prescription is not of that character. Will you now confide in me, and suffer me to sup with you. It is the pleasure of his highness that I do not leave you until you be completely restored, and I think in half an hour refreshment will have done so."
"If such be his highness's pleasure, and your own, doctor, I will have the honor of your company to supper," said Consuelo, suffering Matteus to roll her arm-chair up to the table.
"My company will not be useless," said the doctor, beginning to demolish a superb pheasant, and carving it in an expert manner.
"Were I not here, you would indulge the extreme hunger which follows a long fast, and might injure yourself. I who apprehend no such inconvenience to result to myself, will put the pheasant on my plate, giving you the nice pieces."
The voice of the gastronomical doctor attracted Consuelo's attention, in spite of herself. Great was her surprise, when taking off his mask, he placed it on the table, saying--"Away with this piece of puerility, which keeps me from breathing, and enjoying what I eat." Consuelo shrank back when she recalled, in the _bon vivant_ doctor, the one whom she had seen at her bed-side--Supperville, the physician of the Margravine of Bareith. She had subsequently seen him at a distance at Berlin, without having courage to approach or speak to him. At that time the contrast of his gluttonous appetite, with the emotion and distress she experienced, recalled to her the dryness of his ideas and conversation, amid the consternation and grief of all the family, and she could scarcely restrain her disgust. Supperville, absorbed by the perfume of the pheasant, appeared to pay no attention to her trouble.
Matteus completed the ridiculousness of the situation, by placing himself, with a quick exclamation, before the doctor. The circumspect servant for five minutes had waited on the table without seeing that his face was bare, and it was only when he took the mask for the cover of the _paté_, that he cried out, with terror: "Mercy, doctor! you have let your mask fall on the table!"
"Devil take the artificial face," said he. "Eating with it is impossible. Put it in that corner, and give it to me when I go out."