The Brotherhood of Consolation, Honoré de Balzac [robert munsch read aloud txt] 📗

child has ever lived more chastely, more truly a Christian life than my dear daughter. She was born more than pretty, she was born most beautiful; and her husband, a young man of whose morals I was absolutely sure,--he was the son of a friend of mine, the judge of one of the Royal courts,--did not in any way contribute to my daughter's illness."

Godefroid and Monsieur Bernard made an involuntary pause, and looked at each other.

"Marriage, as you know, sometimes changes a young woman greatly," resumed the old man. "The first pregnancy passed well and produced a son, my grandson, who now lives with us, the last scion of two families. The second pregnancy was accompanied by such extraordinary symptoms that the physicians, much astonished, attributed them to the caprice of phenomena which sometimes manifest themselves in this state, and are recorded by physicians in the annals of science. My daughter gave birth to a dead child; in fact, it was twisted and smothered by internal movements. The disease had begun, the pregnancy counted for nothing. Perhaps you are a student of medicine?"

Godefroid made a sign which answered as well for affirmation as for negation.

"After this terrible confinement," resumed Monsieur Bernard,--"so terrible and laborious that it made a violent impression on my son-in-law and began the mortal melancholy of which he died,--my daughter, two or three months later, complained of a general weakness affecting, particularly, her feet, which she declared felt like cottonwood. This debility changed to paralysis,--and what a paralysis! My daughter's feet and legs can be bent or twisted in any way and she does not feel it. The limbs are there, apparently without blood or muscles or bones. This affection, which is not connected with anything known to science, spread to the arms and hands, and we then supposed it to be a disease of the spinal cord. Doctors and remedies only made matters worse until at last my poor daughter could not be moved without dislocating either the shoulders, the arms, or the knees. I kept an admirable surgeon almost constantly in the house, who, with the doctor, or doctors (for many came out of interest in the case), replaced the dislocated limbs,--sometimes, would you believe it monsieur? three and four times a day! Ah!--This disease has so many forms that I forgot to tell you that during the first period of weakness, before the paralysis began, the strangest signs of catalepsy appeared--you know what catalepsy is. She remained for days with her eyes wide open, motionless, in whatever position she was when the attack seized her. The worst symptoms of that strange affection were shown, even those of lockjaw. This phase of her illness suggested to me the idea of employing magnetism, and I was about to do so when the paralysis began. My daughter, monsieur, has a miraculous clear-sightedness; her soul has been the theatre of all the wonders of somnambulism, just as her body has been that of all diseases."

Godefroid began to ask himself if the old man were really sane.

"So that I," continued Monsieur Bernard paying no attention to the expression in Godefroid's eyes, "even I, a child of the eighteenth century, fed on Voltaire, Diderot, Helvetius,--I, a son of the Revolution, who scoff at all that antiquity and the middle-ages tell us of demoniacal possession,--well, monsieur, I affirm that nothing but such possession can explain the condition of my child. As a somnambulist she has never been able to tell us the cause of her sufferings; she has never perceived it, and all the remedies she has proposed when in that state, though carefully carried out, have done her no good. For instance, she wished to be wrapped in the carcass of a freshly killed pig; then she ordered us to run the sharp points of ret-hot magnets into her legs; and to put hot sealing-wax on her spine--"

Godefroid looked at him in amazement.

"And then! what endless other troubles, monsieur! her teeth fell out; she became deaf, then dumb; and then, after six months of absolute dumbness, utter deafness, speech and hearing have returned to her! She recovered, just as capriciously as she had lost, the use of her hands. But her feet have continued in the same hapless condition for the last seven years. She has shown marked and well-characterized symptoms of hydrophobia. Not only does the sight of water, the sound of water, the presence of a glass or a cup fling her at times into a state of fury, but she barks like a dog, that melancholy bark, or rather howl, a dog utters when he hears an organ. Several times we have thought her dying, and the priests had administered the last sacraments; but she has always returned to life to suffer with her full reason and the most absolute clearness of mind; for her faculties of heart and soul are still untouched. Though she has lived, monsieur, she has caused the deaths of her mother and her husband, who have not been able to endure the suffering of such scenes. Alas! monsieur, those distressing scenes are becoming worse. All the natural functions are perverted; the Faculty alone can explain the strange aberration of the organs. 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 I wrote, Desplein, Bianchon, and Haudry, thought from my letters that I was 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 I should 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 I was 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. Only, Dr. Berton says, he is very exacting and overbearing. He selects his patients, and will not allow an instant of his time to be wasted; and he is--a communist! His name is Halpersohn. My grandson has been twice to find him, but he is always too busy to attend to him; he has not been to see us; I fully understand why."

"Why?" asked Godefroid.

"Because my grandson, who is sixteen years old, is even more shabbily dressed than I am. Would you believe it, monsieur? I _dare_ not go to that doctor; my clothes are so out of keeping with a man of my age and dignity. If he saw the father as shabby as I am, and the boy even worse, he might not give my daughter the needful attention; he would treat us as doctors treat the poor. And think, my dear monsieur, that I love my daughter for all the suffering she has caused me, just as I used to love her for the joys I had in her. She has become angelic. Alas! she is nothing now but a soul, a soul which beams upon her son and me; the body no longer exists; she has conquered suffering. Think what a spectacle for a father! The whole world, to my daughter, is within the walls of her room. I keep it filled with flowers, for she loves them. She reads a great deal; and when she has the use of her hands she works like a fairy. She has no conception of the horrible poverty to which we are reduced. This makes our household way of life so strange, so eccentric, that we cannot admit visitors. Do you now understand me, monsieur? Can you not see how impossible a neighbor is? I should have to ask for so much forbearance from him that the obligation would be too heavy. Besides, I have no time for friends; I educate my grandson, and I have so much other work to do that I only sleep three, or at most four hours at night."

"Monsieur," said Godefroid, who had listened patiently, observing the old man with sorrowful attention, "I will be your neighbor, and I will help you."

A scornful gesture, even an impatient one, escaped the old man, for he was one who believed in nothing good in human nature.

"I will help you," pursued Godefroid, taking his hand, "but in my own way. Listen to