Doctor Grillo was a physician who had made himself a great name
throughout his whole country, so that he was sent for and consulted
from far and wide, and everybody looked up to him as a very wise man,
whose word was final on any question of medicine. The discovery that
'no man is a hero to his valet' was made long before the idea so
found expression in the seventeenth century; Doctor Grillo had a
man-servant who chose to entertain a very different notion of his
merits and powers from that of the rest of the world; and in time,
from undervaluing his attainments, he came to conceive the belief
that he could himself do just as well as his master.
One day, when the Doctor was out, this serving-man took into his
head to roll up into a great bundle his doctor's gown and cap, [386]
a number of prescriptions, and a quantity of bottles, and with these
he stole away and betook himself to a far country, where he gave
himself out for the famed Doctor Grillo.
Just at the time he arrived, the queen of the country was in great
suffering, nor could any native professor of medicine succeed in
benefiting her. Naturally the services of the great Doctor Grillo
were put in request in her behalf, as soon as his cunning servant
had given himself out as the owner of his world-wide reputation,
and fortune favoured him in his two earliest attempts. Suffice it
to say, he succeeded in satisfying her requirements by a kind of
luck and from that day forward his fortune was made, justifying
the Italian saying, 'An ounce of good fortune furthers one more
than a pound of knowledge.' [387] Everywhere he was now called in,
and though he prescribed his remedies all higgledypiggledy, without
science or experience, not more of his patients died than those of
other mediciners. The people were, therefore, quite satisfied that
when Doctor Grillo had prescribed the best had been done that human
skill could afford.
By-and-by it came to the ears of the real Doctor Grillo that a quack
and impostor was wearing his laurels; nor did he sooner hear the news
than he set out to confront him.
'Beware good people! What are you doing?' was his say. 'This man
knows no more of medicine than one of yourselves; you will all die
if you trust to him. He is no Doctor Grillo. I am Doctor Grillo.'
But all the people laughed in his face, filled as they were with the
prepossession of their first impressions, and they began to drive him
out of their midst; but he protested so loudly, 'I am Doctor Grillo,'
that a wiseacre [388] in the crowd thought to win for himself a
reputation for discernment by insisting that he should have a trial.
It happened that the daughter of the Chief Judge was at that time
stricken with fever, and as he had observed in the language and manners
of the new Doctor Grillo more traces of learning and refinement [389]
than in the first arrived of the name, he willingly agreed that the
case should be submitted to him for treatment. His wife had, however,
just before sent for the false Doctor Grillo, so that both arrived in
the sick-room at the same moment; and loud and long was the dispute
between husband wife, master and servant, as to which doctor should
approach the patient. By the time the husband had carried his point,
and the real physician entered upon his functions, the fever had got
such hold of the sufferer that no medicine more availed, and the girl
succumbed to the consequences of the delay in administering the most
ordinary remedies.
Nevertheless, it was in the hands of the real Doctor Grillo that
she had died. The one proof of his identity which had been granted
had gone against him, and the popular mind was quite satisfied that
it was he was the impostor. As the pompous funeral of the Judge's
daughter brought all the circumstances to the minds of the people,
the feeling against him gathered and grew; and when at last one more
mischievous and malicious than the rest proposed that he should be
driven out of the community, the idea met with such a ready response
that he would certainly not have escaped with his life from the
yells and stone-throwing [390] of the infuriated populace, had not
his retreat been protected by the more peaceably disposed citizens.
But the false Doctor Grillo remained thenceforward in undisturbed
possession of the fame and fortune attaching to the name he had
filched.
[This is probably a filtering of one of the many stories about
Theophrastus Paracelsus. I think there was something very like it in
a little book of popular legends about him given me at Salzburg, but
I have not got it at hand to refer to. Zingerle, 'Sagen aus Tirol,'
p. 417, tells a story of his servant prying into the wise man's
penetralia, and getting a worse punishment for his pains than Gehazi.]