Her doctor,
or rather her friend, Dr. Alain, was one of those men who carry a
blessing with them, and whose countenance seems to reflect Heaven by
the bedside of the sick poor they visit. He was himself suffering from
a complaint of the heart brought on by a pure and mysterious passion
for one of the loveliest women in Paris.
He was active, humane, pious, and tolerant, and possessing a small
fortune sufficient for his simple wants and charities, practiced only
for a few friends or for the poor. His physic was friendship or charity
in action. The medical career is so admirable when divested of all
cupidity, it brings so much into play the better feelings of our
nature, that it often ends by being a virtue after commencing as a
profession, With Dr. Alain it was more than a virtue; it had become a
passion for relieving the woes of the body and of the soul, which are
often so closely linked! Where Alain brought life, he also took God
with him, and made even Death resplendent with serenity and
immortality.
I saw him, too, die, some years later, the death of the righteous and
the just.
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