"I will give you all I--nay, pardon me; what need is there to tempt you, his friend, with reward?
Only save him, save him." "I will do what I can, Lady, but the issue is in other hands than mine," I answered, and just then her attendants came up and put an end to the conversation.
To this day the memory of that old rabbi, the court physician, affects me like a nightmare, for of all the medical fools that ever I met he was by far the most pre-eminent.

All about the place he followed me suggesting remedies that would have been absurd even in the Middle Ages.
The least harmful of them, I remember, was that poor Orme's head should be plastered with a compound of butter and the bones of a still-born child, and that he should be given some filthy compound to drink which had been specially blessed by the priests.

Others there were also that would certainly have killed him in half-an-hour.
Well, I got rid of him at last for the time, and returned to my vigil.
It was melancholy work, since no skill that I had could tell me whether my patient would live or die.

Nowadays the young men might know, or say that they did, but it must be remembered that, as a doctor, I am entirely superannuated.

How could it be otherwise, seeing that I have passed the best of my life in the desert without any opportunity of keeping up with the times.
Three days went by in this fashion, and very anxious days they were.