He locked his arms over
his chest, set his back against the wall, and fell into a deep
melancholy. He mused upon the meagre happiness that this depressing
way of living can give. What did it amount to? Amusement with no
pleasure in it, gaiety without gladness, joyless festivity, fevered
dreams empty of all delight, firewood or ashes on the hearth without a
spark of flame in them. When he raised his head, he found himself
alone, all the billiard players had gone.
"I have only to let them know my power to make them worship my
coughing fits," he said to himself, and wrapped himself against the
world in the cloak of his contempt.
Next day the resident doctor came to call upon him, and took an
anxious interest in his health. Raphael felt a thrill of joy at the
friendly words addressed to him. The doctor's face, to his thinking,
wore an expression that was kind and pleasant; the pale curls of his
wig seemed redolent of philanthropy; the square cut of his coat, the
loose folds of his trousers, his big Quaker-like shoes, everything
about him down to the powder shaken from his queue and dusted in a
circle upon his slightly stooping shoulders, revealed an apostolic
nature, and spoke of Christian charity and of the self-sacrifice of a
man, who, out of sheer devotion to his patients, had compelled himself
to learn to play whist and tric-trac so well that he never lost money
to any of them.
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