Monsigneur Canard, as my new master was called, offered to help me in any way he could to retain ownership of my hoard in Cologne. He could see I was unhappy. As soon as I was installed in his home, he asked me to give him a full account of my affairs. Then he’d know how best to advise me. I was afraid it wouldn’t do me much good to reveal my background to him, so I pretended to be an impoverished German aristocrat, one who had neither father nor mother but only a lot of minor family members in a citadel currently occupied by a Swedish garrison. However, this I had to conceal from my landlord and the two young nobs (who were of the Catholic persuasion) in case they seized what was mine as enemy property. I said I might write to the commandant of said citadel, in whose regiment I held the position of ensign, tell him the trick that had been played on me here, and ask him if he’d be so good as to get hold of my stuff and distribute it among my friends until such time as I could return and take up my commission. Canard thought this was a good idea and promised to make sure my letter reached its destination, wherever that might be – Mexico or China, even. So I sat down and composed letters to my darling, to my father-in-law and to Colonel de S. A., Commandant of L., to whom I addressed the whole package, enclosing the other two missives. The gist was, my main aim was to return as soon as I could get the money together for such a long trip. I asked both my father-in-law and the colonel to proceed to military means if necessary in order to recover my stuff while they still could. I also, while I was at it, itemized the gold, silver and jewellery involved. Plus I made copies of all the letters, giving the originals to M. Canard to send and posting the copies. That way, if one of the letters didn’t arrive, a duplicate should. So it was in a rather better mood that I set about teaching my master’s two sons – a job that was made easier by their being brought up as young princes. M. Canard was very rich, you see, which made him extremely haughty in his manner, determined to stand out. It was a disease he’d caught from high-ups, hobnobbing with princes almost daily and aping their ways. His own house was like a nobleman’s schloss. The only thing missing was that no one addressed him as ‘Your Grace’. He thought he was the bee’s knees, though, and even when a marquis called to consult him he declined to treat the man as a superior. He ministered to lesser folk, too, and rather than take less money off them he charged them nothing at all. Good for his reputation, wasn’t it? I took an interest in the whole business, and once I’d realized that he was using me to show off when I and other members of his staff came trotting in behind him on house calls, I also, back at the house, offered to help prepare remedies in his laboratory. That put me on pretty good terms with the man, and since he enjoyed speaking German anyway I once enquired why he didn’t apply for an ‘of’ after his name, now that he’d bought a noble seat outside Paris for 20,000 crowns? I also asked why he was so keen to turn his sons into doctors, making them study so hard? With his star riding so high, why not follow the example of other aristos and buy the boys titles of one kind or another, ennobling them properly? ‘No,’ he replied. ‘When I call on a prince, I’ll be told, “Won’t the doctor please take a seat?” Whereas a nobleman will be told, “Wait here!” ’ ‘But,’ I said, ‘hasn’t the doctor heard the one about medics having three faces: that of an angel, when the patient first claps eyes on him; then that of a God, when the pain eases; thirdly, that of a devil when, restored to health, the former invalid sees him and his bill off the premises? Any respect lasts only as long as the patient’s flatulence. Once the burps have gone and the rumbling stops, so does the respect. Then it’s: “You know where the door is, doc.” Surely the reverse is true: your nob earns more kudos standing than a doctor does sitting down, because he gets to wait on his prince every day. He has the honour of never leaving the prince’s side. Weren’t you recently, sir, required to pop a prince’s stool into your mouth and taste it? I’d sooner be kept waiting for ages than be asked to sink my teeth into another man’s shit, even if I was being paid well over the odds.’ ‘I didn’t have to do it,’ was his reply. ‘I did it willingly. I thought: if the prince sees how far I’m prepared to go in order to investigate his condition thoroughly, he’ll respect me even more. Anyway, who wouldn’t try one of his turds if it was going to bring in several hundred gold pistoles? When I give him something quite different to swallow I don’t have to pay him anything. No, you’re talking like a German here. If you belonged to any other nation I’d say you were talking like a fool!’ At this point I shut up. He was getting angry, I could see. So to put him back in a good mood I asked him to excuse my simple-mindedness and changed the subject.