SCENE VII.——ARGAN, BÉRALDE.

ARG.
Ah heaven! I am dead. Brother, you have undone me.

BER.
Why? What is the matter?

ARG.
I am undone. I feel already that the faculty is avenging itself.

BER.
Really, brother, you are crazy, and I would not for a great deal that you should be seen acting as you are doing. Shake yourself a little, I beg, recover yourself, and do not give way so much to your imagination.

ARG.
You hear, brother, with what strange diseases he has threatened me.

BER.
What a foolish fellow you are!

ARG.
He says that I shall become incurable within four days.

BER.
And what does it signify what he says? Is it an oracle that has spoken? To hear you, anyone would think that Mr. Purgon holds in his hands the thread of your life, and that he has supreme authority to prolong it or to cut it short at his will. Remember that the springs of your life are in yourself, and that all the wrath of Mr. Purgon can do as little towards making you die, as his remedies can do to make you live. This is an opportunity, if you like to take it, of getting rid of your doctors; and if you are so constituted that you cannot do without them, it is easy for you, brother, to have another with whom you run less risk.
ARG.
Ah, brother! he knows all about my constitution, and the way to treat me.

BER.
I must acknowledge that you are greatly infatuated, and that you look at things with strange eyes.