But what devotion, what zeal, what a tender and
generous soul!"
In the intervals of his necessary occupations he studied medicine and
surgery, in the latter of which he attained considerable skill. In the
many subsequent years of his country life, he made these accomplishments
very useful to the village folk. No stress of weather or
unseasonableness of hours could detain him from attending the sick, when
summoned; but being obliged, as George says, to be ridiculous as well as
sublime in all things, he was wont to beat his patients when they were
bold enough to offer him money for their cure, and even made missile
weapons of the poultry and game which they brought him in acknowledgment
of his services, assailing them with blows and harder words, till they
fled, amused or angry. Maurice, his first pupil, was a delicate and
indolent child, and showed little robustness of character till his early
manhood, when the necessity of a career forced him into the ranks of the
great army.
The first threatenings of the Revolution found in Madame Dupin an
unalarmed observer. As a disciple of Voltaire and Rousseau, she could
not but detest the abuses of the Court; she shared, too, the general
personal alienation of the aristocracy from the _German woman_, as they
called Marie Antoinette.
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