第51章

She was in this state when I brought her from the provinces to Paris in 1829, because the two or three distinguished doctors to whom Iwrote, Desplein, Bianchon, and Haudry, thought from my letters that Iwas telling them fables.Magnetism was then energetically denied by all the schools of medicine, and without saying that they doubted either my word or that of the provincial doctors, they said we could not have observed thoroughly, or else we had been misled by the exaggeration which patients are apt to indulge in.But they were forced to change their minds when they saw my daughter; and it is to the phenomena they then observed that the great researches made in these latter days are owing; for I must tell you that they class my daughter's singular state as a form of neurosis.At the last consultation of these gentlemen they decided to stop all medicines, to let nature alone and study it.Since then I have had but one doctor, and he is the doctor who attends the poor of this quarter.We do nothing for her now but alleviate pain, for we know not the cause of it."Here the old man stopped as if overcome with his harrowing confidence.

"For the last five years," he continued, "my daughter alternates between revivals and relapses, but no new phenomena have appeared.She suffers more or less from the varied nervous attacks I have briefly described to you, but the paralysis of the legs and the derangement of the natural functions are constant.The poverty into which we fell, and which alas! is only increasing, obliged me to leave the rooms that I took, in 1829, in the faubourg du Roule.My daughter cannot endure the fatigue of moving; I came near losing her when I brought her to Paris, and again when I removed her to this house.Here my worst financial misfortunes have come upon me.After thirty years in the public service I was made to wait four years before my pension was granted.I have only received it during the last six months and even then the new government has sternly cut it down to the minimum."Godefroid made a gesture of surprise which seemed to ask for a more complete confidence.The old man so understood it, for he answered immediately, casting a reproachful glance to heaven:--"I am one of the thousand victims of political reaction.I conceal my name because it is the mark for many a revenge.If the lessons of experience were not always wasted from one generation to another Ishould warn you, young man, never to adopt the sternness of any policy.Not that I regret having done my duty; my conscience is perfectly clear on that score; but the powers of to-day have not that solidarity which formerly bound all governments together as governments, no matter how different they might be; if to-day they reward zealous agents it is because they are afraid of them.The instrument they have used, no matter how faithful it has been, is, sooner or later, cast aside.You see in me one of the firmest supporters of the government of the elder branch of the Bourbons, as Iwas later of the Imperial power; yet here I am in penury! Since I am too proud to beg, they have never dreamed that I suffer untold misery.

Five days ago, monsieur, the doctor who takes care of my daughter, or rather I should say, observes her, told me that he was unable to cure a disease the forms of which varied perpetually.He says that neurotic patients are the despair of science, for the causes of their conditions are only to be found in some as yet unexplored system.He advised me to have recourse to a physician who has been called a quack; but he carefully pointed out that this man was a stranger, a Polish Jew, a refugee, and that the Parisian doctors were extremely jealous of certain wonderful cures he had made, and also of the opinion expressed by many that he is very learned and extremely able.