l are these excellent men, that to save themselves from losing a
day, they will lose their souls. Their music is the tramp of a hoof;
their sauce is hunger; their matins are an exchange of abuse and bad
words; their mass is--to hear none at all."

While speaking thus, Rodaja stood at an apothecary's door, and turning
to the master of the shop, he said, "Your worship's occupation would be
a most salutary one if it were not so great an enemy to your lamps."

"Wherein is my trade an enemy to my lamps?" asked the apothecary.

"In this way," replied Rodaja; "whenever other oils fail you,
immediately you take that of the lamp, as being the one which most
readily comes to hand. But there is, indeed, another fault in your
trade, and one that would suffice to ruin the most accredited physician
in the world." Being asked what that was, he replied that an apothecary
never ventured to confess, or would admit, that any drug was absent from
his stock; and so, if he have not the medicine prescribed, he makes use
of some other which, in his opinion, has the same virtues and qualities;
but as that is very seldom the case, the medicine, being badly
compounded, produces an effect contrary to that expected by the
physician.

Rodaja was then asked what he though, of the physicians themselves, and
he replied as follows: "_Honora medicum propter necessitatem, etenim
creavit cum altissimus: a Deo enim est omnis medela, et a rege accipiet
donationem: disciplina medici exaltavit caput illius, et in conspectu
magnatum collaudabitur. Altissimus de terra creavit medicinam, et vir
prudens non abhorrebit illam._ Thus," he added, "speaketh the Book of
Ecclesiasticus, of Medicine, and good Physicians; but of the bad ones we
may safely affirm the very contrary, since there are no people more
injurious to the commonwealth than they are. The judge may distort or
delay the justice which he should render us; the lawyer may support an
unjust demand; the merchant may help us to squander our estate, and, in
a word, all those with whom we have to deal in common life may do us
more or less injury; but to kill us without fear and standing quietly at
his ease; unsheathing no other sword than that wrapped in the folds of a
recipe, and without being subject to any danger of punishment, that can
be done only by the physician; he alone can escape all fear of the
discovery of his crimes, because at the moment of committing them he
puts them under the earth. When I w