scribed for everybody. I was not exempt, and I dreaded her knowing anything about the most trifling indisposition that affected me. Greatly addicted to empiricism, she would propose the most strange remedies; and, fond of the use of medicine herself, she would be out of humour if others showed an aversion to it. There was no surer way of securing her good graces than to put one's self under her management for some feigned complaint, and then to attribute the cure to her skill. Hundreds of knaves have got presents out of her in this way. For they had but to say that, during their illness, they had lost an employment, or spent their ready money, no matter what—they were sure to be remunerated tenfold above their pretended losses. Let it however be said to her honour, that, among the number she succoured in real sickness, many owned with gratitude the good she had done: and no surer proof of this can be given than the universal sorrow that pervaded half the population of Sayda, when, in the course of this her illness, she was reported to be past recovery.
It was in compliance with this foible of hers that, when I returned to Dar Jôon, after being laid up with a bad leg, she would insist on my wearing a laced cloth boot, which she ordered to be made, unknown to me; on my washing the œdematous leg in wine with laurel leaves steeped in it; and on sitting always,
