The adventures of Harlequin

Next morning, when neither Scaramouche nor Violetta was looking—for he was terribly afraid that they would laugh at him—Harlequin slipped out of the inn and walked as far as Pantaloon’s house.

“It is certainly an unpromising citadel to try to storm,” he thought, as he observed the closed door and the heavily curtained windows, through which, even if Columbine were behind them, there was not the least chance of catching a glimpse of her.

“How on earth does one get into a house into which one has no sort of an excuse for getting?” Harlequin asked himself. Then he recollected that Pantaloon was a doctor.

“Why,” he cried, “what a fool I am! It is the simplest thing in the world.”

So he pulled his face into a very miserable expression, and knocked at the door.

He had to knock three times, and even then it was only after a great rattling of chains and creaking of bolts that the door was opened. Round it peered a long, white face, made all the whiter by the black skull-cap which crowned it, a pair of big, melancholy eyes, and a little scarlet mouth shaped like an O. This, as Harlequin immediately guessed, was Pierrot.

“What do you want?” asked a thin, wavering voice.

“I am very ill,” said Harlequin. “I want to see Dr. Pantaloon.”

“Oh, do you?” said Pierrot. “Are you really very ill?”

“Dreadfully,” said Harlequin. “I feel as though I should die.”

“Well,” said Pierrot doubtfully, “I will ask him if he will see you. He doesn’t see every one, you know.”

He shut the door in Harlequin’s face, and went away.

“What a heartless fellow!” thought Harlequin. “For all he cares I might die in the street. And what a loon he looks! No wonder Columbine laughs at him!”

Presently Pierrot opened the door again.

“You may come in,” he said. “This way.”

He led Harlequin into an untidy room, surrounded by shelves full of curious contrivances and bottles containing liquids of various colours. In one corner stood a skeleton, which grinned so stupidly and looked so unsteady on its legs, that Harlequin wondered whether its owner had died after a drinking bout. From the ceiling hung a stuffed crocodile and some dried, outlandish fishes. There was a very unpleasant smell.

After a few minutes Pantaloon came stumping in. He glared fiercely at Harlequin through his great horn-rimmed spectacles.

“Well,” he said, “what can I do for you?”

“I am very ill,” Harlequin repeated. “I want you to cure me.”

“But you are not one of my regular patients,” said Pantaloon. “I only attend to my regular patients.”

“But one cannot very well be a regular patient,” replied Harlequin, “until one has paid you a first visit. Can one?”

“No,” said Pantaloon thoughtfully; “that is true enough. I see you are a logician, sir.”

“Logician or not,” said Harlequin, “I like to have the best of everything. So, naturally, being ill, I came to you.”

“Quite so, quite so,” said Pantaloon, more amiably than he had yet spoken. “But who told you to come to me?”

“Why,” cried Harlequin, “all Venice. For all Venice talks of the skill and learning of Dr. Pantaloon.”

The doctor smiled, or at any rate grinned.

“I shouldn’t wonder if the bony gentleman in the corner was his brother,” Harlequin thought.

“Well, young man,” said Pantaloon, “I will do what I can for you. Let me look at your tongue.” Harlequin put out his tongue, which was as red as a beetroot. Pantaloon peered at it.

“Horrible!” he said. “I am afraid you are very bad. Let me feel your pulse.”

He took Harlequin’s wrist in one hand, and an enormous watch from his pocket in the other.

“Tut-tut,” he said, “what a rate it is going!”

Harlequin noticed, however, that, whatever his pulse was doing, the watch was not going at all.

“Have you any pain?” asked the Doctor.

“Yes,” said Harlequin, “a horrible pain.” And he rubbed himself eloquently in the middle.

“It is a good thing you came to me,” said Pantaloon. “There is no one else in Venice who could have saved your life.”

He took a bottle down from one of the shelves, and poured some pink liquid into a glass. To this he added some green and then a little purple. It was a very pretty mixture.

“Drink this,” he said to Harlequin. “It will do you a lot of good.”

“Mayn’t I take it home with me?” said Harlequin.

“Certainly not,” said Pantaloon. “All depends on your drinking it at once.”

So Harlequin screwed up his face and gulped the stuff down: there was nothing else to be done. He screwed up his face even more when he had finished the draught.

“Ugh!” he said.

“That will make you ever so much better,” said Pantaloon.

“It has made me ever so much worse,” the patient retorted, sinking into a chair and clasping his head in his hands. “Oh, my poor head!” he cried.

“What is the matter with it?” asked Pantaloon.

“It aches terribly,” said Harlequin.

“That is just as it should be,” said Pantaloon complacently. “The medicine has driven the pain upwards. In a minute or two it will come out at the top and you will be all right.”

“But I have a particularly sensitive head,” said Harlequin. “I have been subject to these dreadful headaches ever since I was a baby. There is only one thing that will cure them.”

“What is that?” Pantaloon asked.

“If a woman strokes my forehead with her soft hands,” Harlequin replied. “That always makes me better. I suppose you have no one in the house who would do it?”

“Certainly not,” said Pantaloon decidedly. “What a suggestion!”

“I only wondered,” said Harlequin innocently. “I thought perhaps your daughter...”

“What do you know about my daughter?” cried Pantaloon, in a great rage. “You are an impudent fellow. Get out of my house, sir! You have wasted quite enough of my time. I don’t believe you are ill at all.”

“If I wasn’t when I came,” Harlequin retorted, “I am now—after your disgusting medicine.”

“How dare you, sir?” the Doctor shouted. “It is the most excellent medicine in the world—far too good to be poured down your worthless gullet. Now be off with you.”

“With all the pleasure in life,” said Harlequin, and made for the door.

“Not so fast,” cried Pantaloon. “Before you go, I want my fee. A crown, if you please.”

“A crown!” exclaimed Harlequin. “A crown for that vile potion? You ought to pay me for drinking it.”

“If you don’t pay up,” said Pantaloon, in a threatening voice, “I will call the police and have you arrested for the rogue you are.”

Harlequin realised that there was nothing to be gained by making the Doctor any angrier, so he reluctantly gave him a crown and took his departure.

Pierrot, who had been present, silent and melancholy, during the whole interview, let him out of the house.

“That isn’t the way to go to work, my friend,” he said, as he unbolted the door.

“What do you mean?” asked Harlequin sharply.

“I know quite well what you are after,” said Pierrot, in his mournful little voice. “But it is no use. Even if you could get near her (which you can’t), it wouldn’t be any use. She wouldn’t look at you. She won’t look at me.”

“That is a very different thing,” said Harlequin contemptuously.

All the same he had to admit to himself that he had not made a very successful beginning. He had failed to see Columbine, made an enemy of her father, and been forced, into the bargain, to pay a crown for the nastiest drink he had ever tasted.