The Mesmerist's Victim

“Merely a nervous movement.”

“Are not the nerves the organs of sense? I conclude that it would be better for man, instead of seeking a machine to kill without pain for punishment, he had better seek the way to punish without killing. The society that discovers that will be the best and most enlightened.”

“Another Utopia!” exclaimed Marat.

“Perhaps you are right, this once,” responded Balsamo. “It is time that will enlighten us.”

Marat wrapped up the female head in his handkerchief which he tied by the four corners in a knot.

“In this way, I am sure that my colleagues will not rob me of my head,” he said.

Walking side by side the dreamer and the practitioner went to the great Hospital.

“You cut that head off coldly and skillfully,” said the former. “Have you less emotion when dealing with the quick? Does suffering affect you less than insensibility? Are you more pitiless with living bodies than the dead?”

“No, for it would be a fault, as in an executioner to let himself feel anything. A man would die from being miscut in the limb as surely as though his head were struck off. A good surgeon ought to operate with his hand and not his heart, though he knows in his heart that he is going to give years of life and happiness for the second’s suffering. That is the golden lining to our profession.”

“Yes; but in the living, I hope you meet with the soul?”

“Yes, if you hold that the soul is the moving impulse – the sensitiveness; that I do meet, and it is very troublesome sometimes for it kills more patients than my scalpel.”

Guided by Marat, who would not put aside his ghastly burden, Balsamo was introduced into the operation ward, crowded with the chief surgeon and the students.

The aids brought in a young man, knocked down the previous week by a heavy wagon which had crushed his foot. A hasty operation at that time had not sufficed; mortification had spread and amputation of the leg was necessary. Stretched on the bed of anguish, the poor fellow looked with a terror which would have melted tigers, on the band of eager men who waited for the time of his martyrdom, his death perchance, to study the science of life – the marvellous phenomenon which conceals the gloomy one of death. He seemed to sue from the surgeon and assistants some smile of comfort, but he met indifference on all sides, steel in every eye.

A remnant of courage and manly pride kept him mute, reserving all to try to check the screams which agony would tear from him.

Still, when he felt the kindly heavy hand of the porter on his shoulder, and the aid's arms interlace him like serpents, and heard the operator’s voice saying “Keep up your pluck my brave man!” he ventured to break the stillness by asking in a plaintive tone:

“You are not going to hurt me much?”

“Not at all; be quiet,” replied Marat, with a false smile which might seem sweet to the sufferer, but was ironical to Balsamo, and noting that the latter had seen through him, the young surgeon whispered to him:

“It is a dreadful operation. The bone is splintered and sensitive so as to make any one pity him. He will die of the pain, not the injury; that will make his soul want to fly away.”

“Why operate on him – why not let him die tranquilly?”

“Because it is a surgeon’s duty to attempt a cure when it is impossible.”

“But you say that he will suffer dreadfully on account of his having a soul too tender for his frame? then, why not operate on the soul so that the tranquillity of the one will be the salvation of the other?”

“Just what I have done,” replied Marat, while the patient was tied down. “By my words, I spoke to the soul – to his sensitiveness, what made the Greek philosopher say, ‘Pain, thou art no ill.’ I told him he would not feel much pain, and it is the business of his soul not to feel any. That is the only remedy known up to the present. As for the questions of the soul – lies! why is this deuce of a soul clamped to the body? When I knocked this head off a spell ago, the body said nothing. Yet that was a grave operation enough. But the movement had ceased, sensitiveness was no more and the soul had fled, as you spiritualists say. That is why the head and the body which I severed, made no remonstrance to me. But the body of this unhappy fellow with the soul still in, will be yelling awfully in a little while. Stop up your ears closely, master. For you are sensitive, and your theory will be killed by the shock, until the day when your theory can separate the soul from the body.”

“You believe such separation will never come?” said Balsamo.

“Try, for this is a capital opening.”

“I will; this young man interests me and I do not want him to feel the pain.”

“You are a leader of men,” said Marat, “but you are not a heavenly being, and you cannot prevent the lad from suffering.”

“If he should not suffer, would his recovery be sure?”

“It would be likely, but not sure.”

Balsamo cast an inexpressible look of triumph on the speaker and placing himself before the patient, whose frightened and terror-filled eyes he caught, he said: “Sleep!” not with the mouth solely but with look, will, all the heat of his blood and the fluid electricity in his system.

At this instant the chief surgeon was beginning to feel the injured thigh and point out to the pupils the extent of the ail.

But at this command from the mesmerist, the young man, who had been raised by an assistant, swung a little and let his head sink, while his eyes closed.

“He feels bad,” said Marat; “he loses consciousness.”

“Nay, he sleeps.”

Everybody looked at this stranger whom they took for a lunatic.

Over Marat’s lips flitted a smile of incredulity.

“Does a man usually speak in a swoon?” asked Balsamo. “Question him and he will answer you.”

“I say, young man,” shouted Marat.

“No, there is no need for you to halloo at him,” said Balsamo, “he will hear you in your ordinary voice.”

“Give us an idea what you are doing?”

“I was told to sleep, and I am sleeping,” replied the patient, in a perfectly unruffled voice strongly contrasting with that heard from him shortly before.

All the bystanders stared at one another.

“Now, untie him,” said Balsamo.

“No, you must not do that,” remonstrated the head surgeon, “the operation would be spoilt by the slightest movement.”

“I assure you that he will not stir, and he will do the same: ask him.”

“Can you be left free, my friend?”

“I can.”

“And you promise not to budge?”

“I promise, if I am ordered so.”

“I order you.”

“Upon my word, sir,” said the chief surgeon, “you speak with so much certainty that I am inclined to try the experiment.”

“Do so, and have no fear.”

“Unbind him,” said the surgeon.

As the men obeyed Balsamo went to the head of the couch.

“From this time forward do not stir till I bid you.”

A statue on a tombstone could not be more motionless than the patient after this command.

“Now, sir, proceed with the operation; the patient is properly prepared.”

The surgeon had his steel ready, but he hesitated at the beginning.

“Proceed,” repeated Balsamo with the manner of an inspired prophet.

Mastered as Marat and the patient had been and as all the rest were, the surgeon put the knife edge to the flesh: it “squeaked” literally at the cut, but the patient did not flinch or utter a sigh.

“What countryman are you, friend?” asked the mesmerist.

“From Brittany, my lord.”

“Do you love your country?”

“Ay, it is such a fine one,” and he smiled.

Meanwhile the operator was making the circular incisions which are the preliminary steps in amputations to lay the bone bare.

“Did you leave it when early in life?” continued Balsamo.

“I was only ten years old, my lord.”

The cuts being made, the surgeon applied the saw to the gash.

“My friend,” said Balsamo, “sing me that song the saltmakers of Batz sing on knocking off work of an evening. I only remember the first line which goes:

‘Hail to the shining salt!’”

The saw bit into the bone: but at the request of the magnetiser, the patient smilingly commenced to sing, slowly and melodiously like a lover or a poet:

“Hail to the shining salt,Drawn from the sky-blue lake:Hail to the smoking kiln,And my rye-and-honey cake!Here comes wife and dad,And all my chicks I love:All but the one who sleeps,Yon, in the heather grove.Hail! for there ends the day,And to my rest I come:After the toil the pay;After the pay, I’m home.”

The severed limb fell on the board, but the man was still singing. He was regarded with astonishment and the mesmeriser with admiration. They thought both were insane. Marat repeated this impression in Balsamo’s ear.

“Terror drove the poor lad out of his wits so that he felt no pain,” he said.

“I am not of your opinion,” replied the Italian sage: “far from having lost his wits, I warrant that he will tell us if I question him, the day of his death if he is to die; or how long his recovery will take if he is to get through.”

Marat was now inclined to share the general opinion that his friend was mad, like the patient.

In the meantime the surgeon was taking up the arteries from which spirted jets of blood.

Balsamo took a phial from his pocket, let a few drops fall on a wad of lint, and asked the chief surgeon to apply this to the cut. He obeyed with marked curiosity.

He was one of the most celebrated operators of the period, truly in love with his science, repudiating none of its mysteries, and taking hazard as the outlet to doubt. He clapped the plug to the wound, and the arteries seared up, hissing, and the blood came through only drop by drop. He could then tie the grand artery with the utmost facility.

Here Balsamo obtained a true triumph, and everybody wanted to know where he had studied and of what school he was.

“I am a physician of the University of Gottingen,” he replied, “and I made the discovery which you have witnessed. But, gentlemen and brothers of the lancet and ligature, I should like it kept secret, as I have great fear of being burnt at the stake, and the Parliament of Paris might once again like the spectacle of a wizard being so treated.”

The head surgeon was brooding; Marat was dreaming and reflecting. But he was the first to speak.

“You asserted,” he said, “that if this man were interrogated about the result of his operation he would certainly tell it though it is in the womb of the future?”

“I said so: what is the man’s name?”

“Havard.”

Balsamo turned to the patient, who was still humming the lay.

“Well, friend, what do you augur about our poor Havard’s fate?” he asked.

“Wait till I come back from Brittany, where I am, and get to the Hospital where Havard is.”

“Of course. Come hither, enter, and tell me the truth about him.”

“He is in a very bad way; they have cut off his leg. That was neatly done, but he has a dreadful strait to go through; he will have fever to-night at seven o’clock – ”

The bystanders looked at each other.

“This fever will pull him down; but I am sure he will get through the first fit.”

“And will be saved?”

“No: for the fever returns and – poor Havard! he has a wife and little ones!”

His eyes filled with tears.

“His wife will be left a widow and the little ones orphans?”

“Wait, wait – no, no!” he cried, clasping his hands. “They prayed so hard for him that their prayers have been granted.”

“He will get well?”

“Yes, he will go forth from here, where he came five days ago, a hale man, two months and fifteen days after.”

“But,” said Marat, “incapable of working and consequently to feed his family.”

“God is good and he will provide.”

“How?” continued Marat: “while I am gathering information, I may as well learn this?”

“God hath sent to his bedside a charitable lord who took pity on him, and he is saying to himself: ‘I am not going to let poor Havard want for anything.’”

All looked at Balsamo, who smiled.

“Verily, we witness a singular incident,” remarked the head surgeon, as he took the patient’s hand and felt his pulse and his forehead. “This man is dreaming aloud.”

“Do you think so?” retorted the mesmerist. “Havard, awake,” he added with a look full of authority and energy.

The young man opened his eyes with an effort and gazed with profound surprise on the bystanders, become for him as inoffensive as they were menacing at the first.

“Ah, well,” he said, “have you not begun your work? Are you going to give me pain?”

Balsamo hastened to speak as he feared a shock to the sufferer. There was no need for him to hasten as far as the others were concerned as none of them could get out a word, their surprise was so great.

“Keep quiet, friend,” he said; “the chief surgeon has performed on your leg an operation which suits the requirement of your case. My poor lad, you must be rather weak of mind, for you swooned away at the outset.”

“I am glad I did for I felt nothing of it,” replied the Breton merrily: “my sleep was a sweet one and did me good. What a good thing that I am not to lose my leg.”

At this very moment he looked over himself, and saw the couch flooded with blood and the severed limb. He uttered a scream and swooned away, this time really.

“Question him, now, and see whether he will reply,” said Balsamo sternly to Marat.

Taking the chief surgeon aside while the aids carried the patient to his bed, he said:

“You heard what the poor fellow said – ”

“About his getting well?”

“About heaven having pity on him and inspiring a nobleman to help his family. He spoke the truth on that head as on the other. Will you please be the intermediary between heaven and your patient. Here is a diamond worth about twenty thousand livres; when the man is nearly able to go out, sell it and give him the money. Meanwhile, since the soul has great influence on the body, as your pupil Marat says justly, tell Havard that his future is assured.”

“But if he should not recover,” said the doctor hesitating.

“He will.”

“Still I must give you a receipt; I could not think of taking an object of this value otherwise.”

“Just as you please; my name is Count Fenix.”

Five minutes afterwards Balsamo put the receipt in his pocket, and went out accompanied by Marat.

“Do not forget your head!” said Balsamo, to whom the absence of mind in this cool student was a compliment.

Marat parted from the chief of the Order with doubt in his heart but meditation in his eyes, and he said to himself: “Does the soul really exist?”

CHAPTER XX

THE DIAMOND COLLAR

ROUSSEAU had been cheated into going to take breakfast with the royal favorite: he was formally invited by the Dauphiness to come to Trianon to conduct in person one of his operas in which she and her ladies and titled amateurs generally were to take the parts even to the supernumeraries.

He had not attired himself specially and he had stuffed his head with a lot of disagreeable plain truths to speak to the King, if he had a chance.

To the courtiers, however, it was the same to see him as any other author or composer, curiosities all, whom the grandees hire to perform in their parlors or on their lawns.

The King received him coldly on account of his costume, dusty with the journey in the omnibus, but he addressed him with the limpid clearness of the monarch which drove from Rousseau’s head all the platitudes he had rehearsed.

But as soon as the rehearsal was begun, the attention was drawn to the piece and the composer was forgotten.

But he was remarking everything; the noblemen in the dress of peasants sang as far out of tune as the King himself; the ladies in the attire of court shepherdesses flirted. The Dauphiness sang correctly, but she was a poor actress; besides, she had so little voice that she could hardly be heard. The Dauphin spoke his lines. In short, the opera scarcely got on in the least.

Only one consolation came to Rousseau. He caught sight of one delightful face among the chorus-ladies and it was her voice which sounded the best of all.

“Eh,” said the Dauphiness, following his look, “has Mdlle. de Taverney made a fault?”

Andrea blushed as she saw all eyes turn upon her.

“No, no!” the author hastened to say, “that young lady sings like an angel.”

Lady Dubarry darted a glance on him sharper than a javelin.

On the other hand Baron Taverney felt his heart melt with joy and he smiled his warmest on the composer.

“Do you think that child sings well?” questioned Lady Dubarry of the King, whom Rousseau’s words had visibly struck.

“I could not tell,” he said: “while they are all singing together. One would have to be a regular musician to discover that.”

Rousseau still kept his eyes on Andrea who looked handsomer than ever with a high color.

The rehearsal went on and Lady Dubarry became atrociously out of temper: twice she caught Louis XV. absent-minded when she was saying cutting things about the play.

Though the incident had also made the Dauphiness jealous, she complimented everybody and showed charming gaiety. The Duke of Richelieu hovered round her with the agility of a youth, and gathered a band of merrymakers at the back of the stage with the Dauphiness as the centre: this furiously disquieted the Dubarry clique.

“It appears that Mdlle. de Taverney is blessed with a pretty voice,” he said in a loud voice.

“Delightful,” said the princess; “if I were not so selfish, I would have her play Colette. But I took the part to have some amusement and I am not going to let another play it.”

“Nay, Mdlle. de Taverney would not sing it better than your Royal Highness,” protested Richelieu, “and – ”

“She is an excellent musician,” said Rousseau, who was penetrated with Andrea’s value in his line.

“Excellent,” said the Dauphiness; “I am going to tell the truth, that she taught me my part; and then she dances ravishingly, and I do not dance a bit.”

You may judge of the effect of all this on the King, his favorite, and all this gathering of the envious, curious, intriguers, and news-mongers. Each received a gain or a sting, with pain or shame. There were none indifferent except Andrea herself.

Spurred on by Richelieu, the Dauphiness induced Andrea to sing the ballad:

“I have lost my only joy —Colin leaves me all alone.”

The King was seen to mark time with a nodding of the head, in such keen pleasure that the rouge scaled off Lady Dubarry’s face in flakes like a painting in the damp.

More spiteful than any woman, Richelieu enjoyed the revenge he was having on Dubarry. Sidling round to old Taverney, the pair resembled a group of Hypocrisy and Corruption signing a treaty of union.

Their joy brightened all the more as the cloud darkened on Dubarry’s brow. She finished by springing up in a pet, which was contrary to all etiquet, for the King was still in his seat.

Foreseeing the storm like ants, the courtiers looked for shelter. So the Dauphiness and La Dubarry were both clustered round by their friends.

The interest in the rehearsal gradually deviated from its natural line and entered into a fresh order of things. Colin and Colette, the lovers in the piece, were no longer thought of, but whether Madame Dubarry might not have to sing:

“I have lost my only joy —Colin leaves me all alone.”

“Do you see the stunning success of that girl of yours?” asked Richelieu of Taverney.

He dashed open a glazed door to lead him into the lobby, when the act made a knave who was standing on the knob to peer into the hall, drop to the ground.

“Plague on the rogue,” said the duke; brushing his sleeve, for the shock of the drop had dusted him. He saw that the spy was clad like one of the working people about the Palace.

It was a gardener’s help, in fact, for he had a basket of flowers on his arm. He had saved himself from falling but spilt the flowers.

“Why, I know the rogue,” said Taverney, “he was born on my estate. What are you doing here, rascal?”

“You see, I am looking on,” replied Gilbert proudly.

“Better finish your work.”

“My work is done,” replied the young man humbly to the duke, without deigning to reply to the baron.

“I run up against this idle vagabond everywhere,” grumbled the latter.

“Here, here, my lord,” gently interrupted a voice; “my little Gilbert is a good workman and a most earnest botanist.”

Taverney turned and saw Dr. Jussieu stroking the cheek of his ex-dependent. He turned red with rage and went off.

“The lackeys poking their noses in here!” he growled.

“And the maids, too – look at your Nicole, at the corner of the door there. The sly puss, she does not let a wink escape her.”

Among twenty other servants, Nicole was holding her pretty head over theirs from behind and her eyes, dilated by surprise and admiration, seemed to see double. Perceiving her, Gilbert turned aloof.

“Come,” said the duke to Taverney, “it is my belief that the King wants to speak to you. He is looking round for somebody.”

The two friends made their way to the royal box.

Lady Dubarry and Aiguillon, both on their feet, were chatting.

Rousseau was alone in the admiration of Andrea; he was busy falling into love with her.

The illustrious actors were changing their dresses in their retiring rooms, where Gilbert had renewed the floral decorations.

Taverney, left by himself in the corridor while Richelieu went to the King, felt his heart alternately frozen and seared by the expectation.

Finally his envoy returned and laid a finger on his lips. His friend turned pale with joy, and was drawn under the royal box, where they heard what had few auditors.

Lady Dubarry was saying: “Am I to expect your Majesty to supper this evening?” and the reply was “I am afraid I am too tired and should like to be excused.”

At this juncture the Dauphin dropped into the box and said, almost stepping on the countess’s toes without appearing to see her:

“Sire, is your Majesty going to do us the honor of taking supper at the Trianon?”

“No, my son; I was just saying to the countess that I am too tired for anything. All your youthful liveliness bewilders me; I shall take supper alone.”

The prince bowed and retired. Lady Dubarry courtseyed very low and went her way, quivering with ire. The King then beckoned to Richelieu.

“Duke, I have some business to talk to you upon; I have not been pleased with the way matters go on. I want an explanation, and you may as well make it while we have supper. I think I know this gentleman, duke?” he continued, eyeing Taverney.

“Certainly – it is Taverney.”

“Oh, the father of this delightful songstress?”

“Yes, Sire.”

The King whispered in the duke’s ear while the baron dug his nails into his flesh to hide his emotion.

A moment after, Richelieu said to his friend: “Follow me, without seeming to do so.”

“Where?”

“Never mind – come, all the same.”

The duke set off and Taverney followed within twenty paces to a room where the following gentleman stopped in the anteroom.

He had not long to wait there. Richelieu, having asked the royal valet for what his master had left on the toilet table, came forth immediately with an article which the baron could not distinguish in its silken wrapper. But the marshal soon drew him out of his disquiet when he led him to the side of the gallery.

“Baron, you have sometimes doubted my friendship for you,” observed the duke when they were alone, “and then you doubted the good fortune of yourself and children. You were wrong, for it has come about for you all with dazzling rapidity.”

“You don’t say that?” said the old cynic, catching a glimpse of part of the truth; he was not yet sundered from good and hence not entirely enlisted by the devil. “How is this?”

“Well, we have Master Philip made a captain with a company of soldiers furnished by the King. And Mdlle. de Taverney is nigh to being a marchioness.”

“Go to! my daughter a – ”

“Listen to me, Taverney: the King is full of good taste. When talent accompanies grace, beauty and virtue, it enchants him. Now, your girl unites all these gifts in an eminent degree so that he is delighted by her.”

“I wish you would make the word ‘delighted’ clearer, duke,” said the other, putting on an air of dignity more grotesque than the speaker’s, which the latter thought grotesque as he did not like pretences.