Roman Legends

DOCTOR GRILLO.

Reading edition

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.

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 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.]

Notes in this chapter

Note 1 · ‘Berretta,’ (also written ‘biretta’) is used for any kind of cap worn by men or boys. It would appear that no kind of head-covering except a Note 2 · ‘Vale più un oncia di fortuna che una libbra di sapere.’ ↑Note 3 · ‘Un saccentuzze.’ ↑Note 4 · ‘Garbatezza.’ ↑Note 5 · ‘Sassata,’ in Italian, has a more terrible significance than ‘stone-throwing,’ in English, conveys. The art of throwing and slinging stones Note 6 · 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,1 a number of Note 7 · Just at the time he arrived, the queen of the country was in great suffering, nor could any native professor of medicine succeed in benefiti Note 8 · 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 o Note 9 · 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 Note 10 · 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