“Not in the least, madame; that race has a covering like a monitor!”
When they were alone, Jack took Mâdou’s hand and found it as burning hot as a brick from the furnace. “Dear Mâdou,” he whispered. Mâdou half opened his eyes and looked at his friend with an expression of utter discouragement.
“It’s all over with Mâdou,” he murmured; “Mâdou has lost his Gri-gri, and will never see Dahomey again.”
This was the reason, then, that he had not left Paris. Two hours after he had run away from the academy, the fifteen francs of market-money and his medal had been stolen from him. Then, relinquishing all idea of Marseilles, of the ship and of the sea, knowing that without his Gri-gri Dahomey was unattainable, Mâdou had spent eight days and nights in the lowest depths of Paris, looking for his amulet. Fearing that Moronval would discover his whereabouts, he hid during the day and ventured into the streets only after nightfall. He slept by the side of piles of bricks and mortar, which partly protected him from the wind; or crawled into an open doorway, or under the arches of a bridge.
Favored by his size and by his color, Mâdou glided about almost unseen; he had associated with criminals of all classes, and had escaped without contamination, for he thought only of finding his amulet. He had shared a crust of bread with assassins, and drank with robbers; but the little king escaped from these dangers as he had from others in Dahomey, where, when hunting with Kérika, he had been awakened by the trumpeting of elephants and the roaring of wild beasts, and saw, under some gigantic tree, the dim shadow of some strange animal passing between himself and the bivouac fires; or caught a glimpse of some great snake slowly winding through the underbrush. But the monsters to be found in Paris are more terrible even than those in the African forests; or they would have been, had he understood the dangers he incurred. But he could not find his Gri-gri. Mâdou could not talk much, his exhaustion was so great; and Jack fell asleep with his curiosity but partially satisfied.
In the middle of the night he was awakened suddenly by a shout from Mâdou, who was singing and talking in his own language with frightful volubility. Delirium had begun.
In the morning, Dr. Hirsch announced that Mâdou was very ill. “A brain-fever!” he said, rubbing his hands in glee.
This Dr. Hirsch was a terrible man. His head was stuffed full of all sorts of Utopian ideas, of impracticable theories, and notions absolutely without method. His studies had been too desultory to amount to anything. He had mastered a few Latin phrases, and covered his real ignorance by a smattering of the science of medicine as practised among the Indians and the Chinese. He even had a strong leaning toward the magic arts, and when a human life was intrusted to his care he took that opportunity to try some experiments. Madame Moronval was inclined to call in another physician, but the principal, less compassionate, and unwilling to incur the additional expense, determined to leave the case solely in the hands of Dr. Hirsch. Wishing to have no interference, this singular physician pretended that the disease was contagious, and ordered Mâdou’s bed to be placed at the end of the garden in an old hot-house. For a week he tried on his little victim every drug he had ever heard of, the child making no more resistance than a sick dog would have done. When the doctor, armed with his bottles and his powders, entered the hot-house, the “children of the sun,” to whose minds a physician was always more or less of a magician, gathered about the door and listened, saying to each other in awed tones, “What is he going to do now to Mâdou?” But the doctor locked the door, and peremptorily ordered the children from its vicinity, telling them that they would be ill too, that Mâdou’s illness was contagious; and this last idea added additional mystery to that corner of the garden.
Jack, nevertheless, desired to see his friend so much that he alone of all the boys would have gladly passed the threshold, had it not been too closely guarded. One day, however, he seized an occasion when the doctor had gone in search of some forgotten drug, and crept softly into the improvised infirmary.
It was one of those half rustic buildings which are used as a shelter for rakes and hoes, or even to house some tender plants. Close by the side of Mâdou’s iron bed, in the corner, was a pile of earthen flowerpots; a broken trellis, some panes of glass, and a bundle of dried roots, completed the dismal picture; and in the chimney, as if for the protection of some fragile tropical plant, flickered a tiny fire.