Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/232

 nick-name had made his fortune, and a German painter said, cunningly, on seeing Signor Splendiano pass through the Place d'Espagne, that he seemed like an Alcides of gigantic stature, and at least six feet high, with the head of a puppet. This strange figure was rolled up in an immense piece of Venice damask with large figures; a belt of buffalo skin, buckled over his chest, supported a rapier at least three ells in length, and on his powdered wig swayed a high and pointed cap, which resembled not a little the obelisk of Saint Peter's Square; and this frizzled wig, which, on account of the small stature of the wearer, reached the middle of his back, represented a kind of cocoon, from which this enormous silk-worm projected half way.

Splendiano put on his spectacles to observe the sick man, and taking dame Catherine aside:—"He is very ill," said he in a low voice; "the esteemed painter, Salvator Rosa, will give up the ghost in your house, if my science does not preserve him. When did he arrive? Does he bring any fine pictures to Naples?"

"Alas! my worthy Signor," said the old lady, "the poor fellow came very suddenly upon me to-night: as for the pictures of which you speak, I have seen nothing of them; but there is down below a great box that Salvator had recommended to my care before falling into the state in which you see him." Catherine lied, but we shall soon see on what account.

"Ho, ho!" said the doctor, smacking his lips and smiling through his beard; then, with all the gravity which his long rapier would allow him to assume, whilst it caught against every piece of furniture, he approached the sick man and felt his pulse with a knowing look, breathing like a smith's bellows in the silence that surrounded him. After having declineddeclaimed [sic] in Greek and Latin, the odd names of more than a hundred diseases which the painter had not, he added that he could not ex abrupto denominate that from which Salvator was suffering, but that he should not be long in finding a very remarkable name, and very efficacious remedies. Having