DOCTOR Come in, my dear fellow. I hope there’s nothing seriously wrong with you. Though that’s an insipid question, because it’s I who should tell you. But first of all, who was that freak of nature you sent me the other day?
HUBERT That’s just it. He has an immediate relevance to my personal troubles.
DOCTOR I’m listening.
HUBERT Doctor, I’m blushing, but it’s a particularly intimate question that brings me here.
DOCTOR Well, blushing is virtue’s colour, as the saying goes, but you needn’t bother to blush when you’re talking to your doctor.
HUBERT The thing … you see … well, the thing is, I’m lacking in, er, ardour …
DOCTOR Simple as Simon Pure! Take an aphrodisiac.
HUBERT Wouldn’t do any good. It’s my morale.
DOCTOR If you know better than I what the matter is with you, why come and consult me?
HUBERT It has something to do with my trade.
DOCTOR You haven’t a trade, you have a profession.
HUBERT Trade or profession or nothing at all, at all events, I write; and I write novels. And the hero of my next novel has flown.
DOCTOR I know; your freak told me.
HUBERT That freak is a detective.
DOCTOR A madman. He suspected me!
HUBERT You must excuse him.
DOCTOR And why has your hero flown? Did he have anything to complain about?
HUBERT What should he have to complain about? He’d only existed for a few pages.
DOCTOR Perhaps you were preparing a bitter fate for him.
HUBERT Not in my opinion.
DOCTOR Perhaps in his.
HUBERT Doctor, I came to consult you about myself, not about Icarus.
DOCTOR He’s called Icarus now, is he?
HUBERT He’s always been called that.
DOCTOR Ah! In any case, it’s a difficult name to bear.
HUBERT You’re more worried about him than you are about me! But I’m the one with the problem. Until he’s found.
DOCTOR Well – you must just be patient.
HUBERT Patient!
DOCTOR A sedative, then. Some orange-blossom water. Some herb tea. That can’t do you any harm.
HUBERT You were recommending an aphrodisiac not long ago, and now it’s a sedative: I want neither the one nor the other.
DOCTOR That’s the modern patient all over. They’d like to dictate our prescriptions to us!
HUBERT None or this gives me back my Icarus.
DOCTOR I’m not a detective.
HUBERT And then, I’m becoming irritable. Very irritable. Can’t you really do anything for me?
DOCTOR Take some bicarbonate of soda … it’s a miracle remedy …
HUBERT I don’t believe in it.
DOCTOR There’s a new pharmacofugal method I can try on you.
HUBERT Thanks! I haven’t got to that point yet.
DOCTOR Well then, I’ll write you out a classic prescription: herb tea on rising, and a little orange-blossom water on retiring. That’ll be two francs.
HUBERT Thank you, Doctor, but I’m in a very bad mood.
DOCTOR What do you expect – that’s life.