Memoirs of a Physician (42 page)
” You are forgetting your head,” said Balsamo, for whom the wandering of the young student’s thoughts was a great triumph.
” Ah ! true,” said he.
And he again picked up his dismal burden. When they emerged into the street, both walked forward very quickly without uttering a word; then, having reached the Eue des Cordeliers, they ascended the steep stairs which led to the attic.
Marat, who had not forgotten the disappearance of his watch, stopped before the lodge of the portress, if the den which she inhabited deserved that name, and asked for Dame Grivette.
A thin, stunted, miserable-looking child, of about seven years old, replied, in a whining voice :
” Mamma is gone out ; she said that when you came home I was to give you this letter.”
” No, no, my little friend,” said Marat ; ” tell her to bring it me herself.”
“Yes, sir.”
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And Marat and Balsamo proceeded on their way.
” Ah ! ” said Marat, pointing out a chair to Balsamo, and falling upon a stool himself, ” I see the master has some noble secrets.”
” Perhaps I have penetrated further than most men into the confidence of nature, and into the works of God,” replied Balsamo.
” Oh ! ” said Marat, ” how science proves man’s omnipotence, and makes us proud to be a man ! “
” True ; and a pliysician, you should have added.”
” Therefore, I am proud of you, master,” said Marat.
“And yet,” replied Balsamo, smiling, “I am but a poor physician of souls.”
” Oh, do not speak of that, sir ; you who stopped the patient’s bleeding by material means.”
” I thought my best cure was that of having prevented him from suffering. True, you assured me he was mad.”
” He was so for a moment, certainly.”
” What do you call madness ? Is it not an abstraction of the soul ? “
” Or of the mind,” said Marat.
” We will not discuss the point. The soul serves me as a term for what I mean. When the object is found, it matters little how you call it.”
“There is where we differ, sir; you pretend you have found the thing, and seek only the name, I maintain that you seek both the object and the name.”
” We shall return to that immediately. You said then that madness was a temporary abstraction of the mind ? “
” Certainly.”
” Involuntarily, is it not ? “
” Yes. I have seen a madman at Bicetre who bit the iron bars of his cell, crying out all the time, ‘ Cook, your pheasants are very tender, but they are badly dressed “
” But you admit, at least, that this madness passes over the mind like a cloud, and that when it has passed, the mind resumes its former brightness ? “
” That scarcely ever happens.”
” Yet you saw our patient recover his senses perfectly after his insane dream.”
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” I saw it, but I did not understand what I saw. It is an exceptional case one of those strange events which the Israelites called miracles ‘
” No, sir,” said Balsamo ; ” it is simply the abstraction of the soul the twofold isolation of spirit and matter. Matter that inert thing dust which will return to dust; and soul, the divine spark which was inclosed for a short period in that dark-lantern called the body, and which, being the child of Heaven, will return to Heaven after the body has sunk to earth.”
” Then vou abstracted the soul momentarily from the body?”
et Yes, sir ; I commanded it to quit the miserable abode which it occupied. I raised it from the abyss of suffering in which pain had bound it, and transported it into pure and heavenly regions. What, then, remained for the surgeon ? The same that remained for your dissecting-knif e, when you severed that head you are carrying from the dead body nothing but inert flesh, matter, clay ‘
” And in whose name did you command the soul ? “
” In His name who created all the souls by His breath the souls of the world, of men in the name of God.”
” Then,” said Marat, ” you deny free will ? “
” I ? ” said Balsamo. ” On the contrary ; what am I doing at this moment ? I show you, on the one hand, free will; on the other, abstraction. I show you a dying man a prey to excruciating pain ; this man has a stoical soul, he anticipates the operation, he asks for it, he bears it, but he suffers. That is free will. But when I approach the dying man I, the ambassador of God, the prophet, the apostle and taking pity upon this man who is my fellow-creature, I abstract, by the powers. which the Lord has given me, the soul from the suffering, body, this blind, inert, insensible body becomes a spectacle which the soul contemplates with a pitying eye from the height of its celestial sphere. Did you not hear Havard, when speaking of himself, say, ‘ Poor Havard ‘ ? He did not say ‘ myself It was because this soul had in truth no longer any connection with the body it was already winging its way to Heaven,”
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” But, by this way of reckoning, man is nothing,” said Marat, ” and I can no longer say to the tyrant, * You have power over my body, but none over my soul.’ “
” Ah ! now you pass from truth to sophism ; I have already told you, sir, it is your failing. God lends the soul to the body, it is true; but it is no less true that during the time the soul animates this body, there is a union between the two an influence of one over the other a supremacy of matter over mind, or mind over matter, according as, for some purpose hidden from us, God permits either the body or the soul to be the ruling power. But it is no less true that the soul which animates the beggar is as pure as that which reigns in the bosom of the king. That is the dogma which you, an apostle of equality, ought to preach. Prove the equality of the spiritual essences in these two cases, since you can establish it by the aid of all that is most sacred in the eyes of men, by holy books and traditions, by science and faith. Of what importance is the equality of matter? With physical equality you are only men ; but spiritual equality makes you gods. Just now, this poor wounded man, this ignorant child of the people, told you things concerning his illness which none among the doctors would have ventured to pronounce. How was that? It was because his soul, temporarily freed from earthly ties, floated above this world, and saw from on high a mystery which our opaque-ness of vision hides from us.”
Marat turned his dead head back and forward upon the table, seeking a reply which he could not find.
” Yes,” muttered he, at last ; ” yes, there is something supernatural in all this.”
” Perfectly natural, on the contrary, sir. Cease to call supernatural what has its origin in the functions and destiny of the soul. These functions are natural, although perhaps not known.”
” But, though unknown to us, master, these functions cannot surely be a mystery to you. The ‘horse, unknown to the Peruvians, was yet perfectly familiar to the Spaniards who had tamed him.”
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” It would be presumptous in me to say ‘ I know I am more humble, sir ; I say ‘ I believe.’ “
” Well, what do you believe ? “
” I believe that the first, the most powerful, of all laws is the law of progress. I believe that God has created nothing without having a beneficent design in view; only, as the duration of this world is uncalculated and incalculable, the progress is slow. Our planet, according to the Scriptures, was sixty centuries old, when printing came like some vast lighthouse to illuminate the past and the future. With the advent of printing, obscurity and for-getf ulness vanished. Printing is the memory of the world. Well, Guttenberg invented printing, and my confidence returned.”
” Ah ! ” said Marat, ironically ; ” you will, perhaps, be able at last to read men’s hearts.”
“Why not?”
” Then you will open that little window in men’s breasts which the ancients so much desired to see ? “
” There is no need for that, sir. I shall separate the soul from the body; and the soul the pure, immaculate daughter of God will reveal to me all the turpitudes of the mortal covering it is condemned to animate.”
” Can vou reveal material secrets ? “
“Why “not?”
“Can you tell me, for instance, who has stolen my watch ? ” ‘
” You lower science to a base level, sir. But, no matter. God’s greatness is proved as much by a grain of sand as by the mountain by the flesh-worm as by the elephant. Yes, I will tell you who has stolen your watch.”
Just then, a timid knock was heard at the door. It was Marat’s servant, who had returned, and who came, according to the young surgeon’s order, to bring the letter.
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CHAPTER ^ MARAT’S PORTRESS.
THE door opened, and Dame Grivette entered. This woman, whom we have not before taken the trouble to sketch, because she was one of those characters whom the painter keeps in the background so long as he has no occasion for them this woman now advances in the moving picture of this history, and demands her place in the immense picture we have undertaken to unroll before the eyes of our readers, in which, if our genius equaled our goodwill, we would introduce all classes of men, from the beggar to the king, from Caliban to Ariel.
We shall now, therefore, attempt to delineate Dame Grivette, who steps forth out of the shade, and advances toward us.
She was a tall, withered creature, of from thirty to five-and-thirty years of age, with dark, sallow complexion, and blue eyes encircled with black rings the fearful type of that decline, that wasting away, which is produced in densely populated towns by poverty, bad air, and every sort of degradation, mental as well as bodily, among those creatures whom God created so beautiful, and who would otherwise have become magnificent in their perfect develop-ment, as all living denizens of earth, air, and sky are when man has not made their life one long punishment when he has not tortured their limbs with chains, and their stomachs with hunger, or with food almost as fatal.
Thus Marat’s portress would have been -a beautiful woman if from her fifteenth year she had not dwelt in a den without air or light if the fire of her natural instinct, fed by this oven-like heart, or by the icy cold, had not ceaselessly burned. She had long, thin hands, which the needle of the seamstress had furrowed with little cuts, which the suds of the wash-house had cracked and softened which the burning coals of the kitchen had Toasted and tanned but in spite of all, hands which, by
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their form, that indelible trace of the divine mold, would have been called royal, if, instead of being blistered by the broom, they had wielded the scepter. So true is it that this poor human body is only the outward sign of our profession.
But in this woman, the mind, which rose superior to the body, and which, consequently, had resisted external circumstances better, kept watch like a lamp; it illumined, as it were, the body by a reflected light, and at times a ray of beauty, youth, intelligence, and love was seen to glance from her dulled and stupid eyes a ray of all the finest feelings of the human heart.
Balsamo gazed attentively at the woman, or, rather, at this singular nature, which had from the first struck his observing eye.
The portress entered holding the letter in her hand, and in a soft, insinuating voice, like that of an old woman for women condemned to poverty are old at thirty said:
” Monsieur Marat, here is the letter you asked for.”
” It was not the letter I wanted,” said Marat ; ” I wished to see you ”’
“Well, here I am at your service, Monsieur Marat” (Dame Grivette made a courtesy); “what do you want with me ? “
” You know very well what I want. I wish to know something about my watch.”
” Ah, dame ! I can’t tell what has become-of it. I saw it all day yesterday hanging from the nail over the mantelpiece.”
” You mistake. All day yesterday it was in my fob ; but when I went out at six o’clock in the evening, I put it under the candlestick, because I was going among a crowd, and I feared it might be stolen.”
” If vou put it under the candlestick, it must be there yet.”
And with feigned simplicity, which she was far from suspecting to be so transparent, she raised the very candlestick of the pair which ornamented the mantelpiece, under which Marat had concealed his watch.
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” Yes, that is the candlestick, sure enough ‘ said the young man ; ” but where is the watch ? “
” No ; I see it is no longer there. Perhaps you did not put it there, Monsieur Marat.”
” But when I tell you I did.”
” Look for it carefully.”
” Oh, I have looked carefully enough,” said Marat, with an angry glance.
” Then you have lost it.”
” But I tell you that yesterday I put it under that candlestick myself.”
” Then some one must have entered,” said Dame Grivette ; ” you see so many people, so many strangers.”
” All an excuse,” cried Marat, more and more enraged. ” You know very well that no one has been here since yesterday. No, no; my watch is gone where the silver top of my last cane went, where the little silver spoon you know of is gone to, and my knife with the six blades. I am robbed. Dame Grivette, I have borne much, but I shall not tolerate this ; so take notice ! “
” But, sir,” said Dame Grivette, ” do you mean to accuse me?”
” You ought to take care of my effects.”
” I have not even the key.”
” You are the portress.”
” You give me a crown a month, and you expect to be as well served as if you had ten domestics.”
” I do not care about being badly served ; but I do care whether I am robbed or not.”
” Sir, I am an honest woman.”
” Yes ; an honest woman whom I shall give in charge to the police, if my watch is not found in an hour.”
” To the police ? “
” Yes.”
” To the police an honest woman like me ? “
” An^ honest woman, do you say ? Honest ! that’s good.”
” Yes ; and of whom nothing bad can be said ; do you hear that ? “
