Doctor Grillo

Doctor Grillo was a physician who had made himself a great name throughout his whole country, so that he was sent for and consulted from far and wide, and everybody looked up to him as a very wise man, whose word was final on any question of medicine. The discovery that 'no man is a hero to his valet' was made long before the idea so found expression in the seventeenth century; Doctor Grillo had a man-servant who chose to entertain a very different notion of his merits and powers from that of the rest of the world; and in time, from undervaluing his attainments, he came to conceive the belief that he could himself do just as well as his master.

One day, when the Doctor was out, this serving-man took into his head to roll up into a great bundle his doctor's gown and cap, a number of prescriptions, and a quantity of bottles, and with these he stole away and betook himself to a far country, where he gave himself out for the famed Doctor Grillo.

Just at the time he arrived, the queen of the country was in great suffering, nor could any native professor of medicine succeed in benefiting her. Naturally the services of the great Doctor Grillo were put in request in her behalf, as soon as his cunning servant had given himself out as the owner of his world-wide reputation, and fortune favoured him in his two earliest attempts. Suffice it to say, he succeeded in satisfying her requirements by a kind of luck and from that day forward his fortune was made, justifying the Italian saying, 'An ounce of good fortune furthers one more than a pound of knowledge.' Everywhere he was now called in, and though he prescribed his remedies all higgledypiggledy, without science or experience, not more of his patients died than those of other mediciners. The people were, therefore, quite satisfied that when Doctor Grillo had prescribed the best had been done that human skill could afford.

By-and-by it came to the ears of the real Doctor Grillo that a quack and impostor was wearing his laurels; nor did he sooner hear the news than he set out to confront him.

'Beware good people! What are you doing?' was his say. 'This man knows no more of medicine than one of yourselves; you will all die if you trust to him. He is no Doctor Grillo. I am Doctor Grillo.'

But all the people laughed in his face, filled as they were with the prepossession of their first impressions, and they began to drive him out of their midst; but he protested so loudly, 'I am Doctor Grillo,' that a wiseacre in the crowd thought to win for himself a reputation for discernment by insisting that he should have a trial.

It happened that the daughter of the Chief Judge was at that time stricken with fever, and as he had observed in the language and manners of the new Doctor Grillo more traces of learning and refinement than in the first arrived of the name, he willingly agreed that the case should be submitted to him for treatment. His wife had, however, just before sent for the false Doctor Grillo, so that both arrived in the sick-room at the same moment; and loud and long was the dispute between husband wife, master and servant, as to which doctor should approach the patient. By the time the husband had carried his point, and the real physician entered upon his functions, the fever had got such hold of the sufferer that no medicine more availed, and the girl succumbed to the consequences of the delay in administering the most ordinary remedies.

Nevertheless, it was in the hands of the real Doctor Grillo that she had died. The one proof of his identity which had been granted had gone against him, and the popular mind was quite satisfied that it was he was the impostor. As the pompous funeral of the Judge's daughter brought all the circumstances to the minds of the people, the feeling against him gathered and grew; and when at last one more mischievous and malicious than the rest proposed that he should be driven out of the community, the idea met with such a ready response that he would certainly not have escaped with his life from the yells and stone-throwing of the infuriated populace, had not his retreat been protected by the more peaceably disposed citizens.

But the false Doctor Grillo remained thenceforward in undisturbed possession of the fame and fortune attaching to the name he had filched.