The cardinal’s summons was urgent, and Guénaud was quick to obey it. He found his patient sprawled on the bed, his legs swollen and livid and his stomach collapsed. Mazarin had undergone a severe attack of gout. He suffered cruelly and with the impatience of a man who wasn’t used to not getting what he wished. At the arrival of Guénaud, he said, “Ah! Now I’m saved!”
Guénaud was a very learned and cautious man who had earned a reputation even before Boileau’s satires101 about him. When he was faced by sickness, even in the person of a king, he treated the patient as a Turk treats a Moor.102 He didn’t reply to Mazarin as the minister expected, with, “The doctor is here now, sickness begone!” On the contrary, after examining the patient he said gravely, “Uh-oh.”
“Eh, Guénaud! What kind of tone is that?”
“The tone I take when I see a condition like yours, Monseigneur, which is dangerous.”
“The gout? Yes, the gout is awful.”
“There are… complications, Monseigneur.”
Mazarin raised himself on one elbow and questioned him with a look and a gesture. “What are you telling me? Am I more ill than I thought I was?”
“Monseigneur,” said Guénaud, sitting down by the bed, “Your Eminence has worked hard in this life, and suffered a great deal.”
“But it seems to me I’m not that old. The late Monsieur de Richelieu was only seventeen months younger than I am when he died, and he had a fatal illness. Compared to him, I’m youthful, Guénaud; I’m barely fifty-two.”103
“Oh, Monseigneur, you’re older than that. How long did the Fronde last?”
“Why do you ask that, Guénaud?”
“To make a medical calculation, Monseigneur.”
“Well, around ten years, more or less.”
“Very well. We must count each year of the Fronde as two years, which makes twenty, and fifty-two plus twenty extra years makes seventy-two. You’re really seventy-two years old, Monseigneur, an advanced age.” As he said this, he felt the patient’s pulse, which conveyed such a negative prognosis that the doctor immediately continued, over the objections of his patient, “Actually, let’s call each year of the Fronde three, which puts you at age eighty-two.”
Mazarin became deadly pale, and in a thin voice he said, “Are you speaking seriously, Guénaud?”
“Alas! Yes, Monseigneur.”
“You took this roundabout way, then, to inform me that I’m extremely ill?”
“Ma foi, yes, Monseigneur, and with a man of wits and courage like Your Eminence, a roundabout way still leads to the truth.”
The cardinal gasped, and had such trouble catching his breath that it inspired pity even in this pitiless doctor.
“There is illness, and illness,” Mazarin replied. “Some may be recovered from.”
“That’s true, Monseigneur.”
“Isn’t it?” cried Mazarin, almost with joy. “For in the end, don’t we have power and force of will? And genius, your genius, Guénaud! What good are science and art if a patient who has access to all of it can’t be saved from danger?”
Guénaud started to open his mouth, but Mazarin continued, “Remember that I’m the most faithful of your patients, that I obey you blindly, and consequently…”
“I know all that,” said Guénaud.
“Then, will I get better?”
“Monseigneur, there is no force of will, no power, no genius, no science that can resist a disease that doubtless comes from God, which he released into the world at Creation with the final power to bring death to men. When a disease is mortal, it kills, and then nothing…”
“My disease… is mortal?” asked Mazarin.
“Yes, Monseigneur.”
His Eminence went limp for a moment, like a man who’s been crushed by a falling column. But there was a well-tempered soul, or rather an iron-hard mind, in Monsieur de Mazarin. “Guénaud,” he said, reviving a little, “you will allow me to take other opinions. I shall gather all the most learned men of Europe and consult them; I’m willing to try virtually any remedy.”
“Surely Monseigneur doesn’t suppose that I would presume to make a lone decision on an existence as precious as his. I have already assembled the finest doctors of France and all Europe—there were twelve of them.”
“And they said…?”
“They said that Your Eminence has a fatal illness; I have their signed consultations here in my portfolio. If Your Eminence wishes to see the report, he will see the names of all the incurable diseases we discovered. First of all, there is…”
“No! No!” cried Mazarin, pushing away the portfolio. “No, Guénaud, I surrender! I surrender!”
This outburst was followed by a profound silence, during which the cardinal regained his senses and recouped his strength. “There’s another option,” murmured Mazarin. “There are still the charlatans and the mountebanks. In my country, those whom the doctors give up for lost turn to a quack, who out of a hundred might kill ten outright, but still save ninety.”
“Over the last month, did Your Eminence not notice that I changed his treatment ten times over?”
“Yes… and so?”
“And so, I spent fifty thousand livres to buy—and try—all the secrets of those quacks. The list is exhausted, and so is my purse. You are not healed, and without my care you would be dead.”
“It’s the end,” murmured the cardinal, “the end.” He looked darkly around at his accumulated wealth. “I’m going to have to leave it all behind,” he sighed. “I’m dead, Guénaud! Dead!”
“Oh, not quite yet, Monseigneur,” said the doctor.
Mazarin seized his hand. “How long?” he asked, fixing wide, staring eyes on the doctor’s face.
“Monseigneur, we never answer that question.”
“To ordinary men, maybe, but to me… to me, for whom every minute is a treasure—tell me, Guénaud, tell me!”
“No, no, Monseigneur.”
“Answer me, I tell you! Oh, give me another month, and for each of those thirty days I’ll pay you a hundred thousand livres.”
“Monseigneur,” replied Guénaud in a firm voice, “it’s God who gives you these days of grace and not I. And God gives to you two more weeks!”
The cardinal sighed deeply and fell back on his pillow, murmuring, “Thank you, Guénaud. Thank you.”
The doctor got up to leave, but the moribund man half rose and said, “Silence!” with eyes of flame. And he repeated, “Silence!”
“Monseigneur, I’ve known this secret for two months, and as you see, I’ve kept it well.”
“Go, then, Guénaud; I’ll see to the making of your fortune. Go, but tell Brienne to send me a certain clerk, whose name is Monsieur Colbert.”