Dr. Bonnet, my old friend--one sometimes has friends older than one's
self--had often invited me to spend some time with him at Riom, and, as
I did not know Auvergne, I made up my mind to visit him in the summer of
1876.
I arrived by the morning train, and the first person I saw on the
platform was the doctor. He was dressed in a gray suit, and wore a soft,
black, wide-brimmed, high-crowned felt hat, narrow at the top like a
chimney pot, a hat which hardly any one except an Auvergnat would wear,
and which reminded one of a charcoal burner. Dressed like that, the
doctor had the appearance of an old young man, with his spare body under
his thin coat, and his large head covered with white hair.
He embraced me with that evident pleasure which country people feel when
they meet long-expected friends, and, stretching out his arm, he said
proudly:
“This is Auvergne!” I saw nothing before me except a range of mountains,
whose summits, which resembled truncated cones, must have been extinct
volcanoes.
Then, pointing to the name of the station, he said:
“Riom, the fatherland of magistrates, the pride of the magistracy, and
which ought rather to be the fatherland of doctors.”
“Why?” I, asked.
“Why?” he replied with a laugh. “If you transpose the letters, you have
the Latin word 'mori', to die. That is the reason why I settled here, my
young friend.”
And, delighted at his own joke, he carried me off, rubbing his hands.
As soon as I had swallowed a cup of coffee, he made me go and see the
town. I admired the druggist's house, and the other noted houses, which
were all black, but as pretty as bric-a-brac, with their facades of
sculptured stone. I admired the statue of the Virgin, the patroness
of butchers, and he told me an amusing story about this, which I will
relate some other time, and then Dr. Bonnet said to me:
“I must beg you to excuse me for a few minutes while I go and see a
patient, and then I will take you to Chatel-Guyon, so as to show you
the general aspect of the town, and all the mountain chain of the
Puy-de-Dome before lunch. You can wait for me outside; I shall only go
upstairs and come down immediately.”
He left me outside one of those old, gloomy, silent, melancholy
houses, which one sees in the provinces, and this one appeared to look
particularly sinister, and I soon discovered the reason. All the large
windows on the first floor were boarded half way up. The upper part of
them alone could be opened, as if one had wished to prevent the people
who were locked up in that huge stone box from looking into the street.
When the doctor came down again, I told him how it struck me, and he
replied:
“You are quite right; the poor creature who is living there must never
see what is going on outside. She is a madwoman, or rather an idiot,
what you Normans would call a Niente. It is a miserable story, but a
very singular pathological case at the same time. Shall I tell you?”