ARG. Ah heaven! I am dead. Brother, you have undone me.
BER. Why? What is the matter?
ARG. I am undone. I feel already that the faculty is avenging itself.
BER. Really, brother, you are crazy, and I would not for a great deal
that you should be seen acting as you are doing. Shake yourself a
little, I beg, recover yourself, and do not give way so much to your
imagination.
ARG. You hear, brother, with what strange diseases he has threatened
me.
BER. What a foolish fellow you are!
ARG. He says that I shall become incurable within four days.
BER. And what does it signify what he says? Is it an oracle that has
spoken? To hear you, anyone would think that Mr. Purgon holds in his
hands the thread of your life, and that he has supreme authority to
prolong it or to cut it short at his will. Remember that the springs
of your life are in yourself, and that all the wrath of Mr. Purgon can
do as little towards making you die, as his remedies can do to make
you live. This is an opportunity, if you like to take it, of getting
rid of your doctors; and if you are so constituted that you cannot do
without them, it is easy for you, brother, to have another with whom
you run less risk.
ARG. Ah, brother! he knows all about my constitution, and the way to
treat me.
BER. I must acknowledge that you are greatly infatuated, and that you
look at things with strange eyes.