JOURNEYS IN DIVERSE PLACES 55 



so much kindness and honour as to permit and command 

 his chief surgeon to visit M. le Marquis d' Auret, his brother, 

 who had received a gunshot wound near the knee, with frac- 

 ture of the bone, about seven months ago, and the physicians 

 and surgeons all this time had not been able to heal him. 

 The King sent for me and bade me go and see M. d' 

 Auret, and give him all the help I could, to heal him 

 of his wound. I told him I would employ all the little 

 knowledge it had pleased God to give me. 



I went off, escorted by two gentlemen, to the Chateau 

 d' Auret, which is a league and a half from Mons in 

 Hainault, where M. le Marquis was lying. So soon as I 

 had come, I visited him, and told him the King had com- 

 manded me to come and see him and dress his wound. He 

 said he was very glad I had come, and was much beholden 

 to the King, who had done him so much honour as to send 

 me to him. 



I found him in a high fever, his eyes deep sunken, with 

 a moribund and yellowish face, his tongue dry and parched, 

 and the whole body much wasted and lean, the voice low as 

 of a man very near death: and I found his thigh much 

 inflamed, suppurating, and ulcerated, discharging a green- 

 ish and very offensive sanies. I probed it with a silver 

 probe, wherewith I found a large cavity in the middle of 

 the thigh, and others round the knee, sanious and cunicu- 

 late: also several scales of bone, some loose, others not. The 

 leg was greatly swelled, and imbued with a pituitous humor 

 . and bent and drawn back. There was a large 

 bedsore; he could rest neither day nor night; and had no 

 appetite to eat, but very thirsty. I was told he often fell 

 into a faintness of the heart, and sometimes as in epilepsy: 

 and often he felt sick, with such trembling he could not 

 carry his hands to his mouth. Seeing and considering all 

 these great complications, and the vital powers thus broken 

 down, truly I was very sorry I had come to him, because 

 it seemed to me there was little hope he would escape 

 death. All the same, to give him courage and good hope, 

 I told him I would soon set him on his legs, by the grace 

 of God, and the help of his physicians and surgeons. 



Having seen him, I went a walk in a garden, and prayed 



