The Body and the Soul.
THE LAST WHO remained beside the master was Marat, the surgeon. He was very pale, and humbly approached the terrible orator, whose power was unlimited.
“Master,” said he, “have I indeed committed a fault?”
“A great one, sir,” said Balsamo; “and, what is worse, you do not believe that you have committed one.”
“Well! yes, I confess that not only do I not believe that I committed a fault, but I think that I spoke as I ought to have done.”
“Pride, pride!” muttered Balsamo; “pride — destructive demon! Men combat the fever in the blood of the patient — they dispel the plague from the water and the air — but they let pride strike such deep roots in their hearts that they cannot exterminate it.”
“Oh, master!” said Marat, “you have a very despicable opinion of me. Am I indeed so worthless that I cannot count for anything among my fellows? Have I gathered the fruits of my labor so ill that I cannot utter a word without being taxed with ignorance? Am I such a lukewarm adept that my earnestness is suspected? If I had no other good quality, at least I exist through my devotion to the holy cause of the people.”
“Sir,” replied Balsamo, “it is because the principle of good yet struggles in you against the principle of evil, which appears to me likely to carry you away one day, that I will try to correct these defects in you. If I can succeed — if pride has not yet subdued every other sentiment in your breast — I shall succeed in one hour.”
“In one hour?” said Marat.
“Yes; will you grant me that time?”
“Certainly.”
“Where shall I see you?”
“Master, it is my place to seek you in any place you may choose to point out to your servant.”
“Well!” said Balsamo, “I will come to your house.”
“Mark the promise you are making, master. I live in an attic in the Rue des Cordeliers. An attic, remember!” said Marat, with an affectation of proud simplicity, with a boasting display of poverty, which did not escape Balsamo; “while you—”
“Well! while I?”
“While you, it is said, inhabit a palace.”
Balsamo shrugged his shoulders, as a giant who looks down with contempt on the anger of a dwarf.
“Well, even so, sir,” he replied; “I will come to see you in your garret.”
“And when, sir?”—”To-morrow.”
“At what time?”
“In the morning.”
“At daybreak I go to my lecture-room, and from thence to the hospital.”
“That is precisely what I want. I would have asked you to take me with you, had you not proposed it.”
“But early, remember,” said Marat; “I sleep little.”
“And I do not sleep at all,” replied Balsamo. “At daybreak, then.”
“I shall expect you.”
Thereupon they separated, for they had reached the door opening on the street, now as dark and solitary as it had been noisy and populous when they entered. Balsamo turned to the left, and rapidly disappeared, Marat followed his example, striding toward the right with his long meager limbs.
Balsamo was punctual; the next morning, at six o’clock, he knocked at Marat’s door, which was the center one of six, opening on a long corridor which formed the top most story of an old house in the Rue des Cordeliers.
It was evident that Marat had made great preparations to receive his illustrious guest. The small bed of walnut-tree, and the wooden chest of drawers beside it, shone bright beneath the sturdy arm of the charwoman, who was busily engaged scrubbing the decayed furniture.
Marat himself lent a helping hand to the old woman, and was refreshing the withered flowers which were arranged in a blue delft pot, and which formed the principal ornament of the attic. He still held a duster underneath his arm, which showed that he had not touched the flowers until after having given a rub to the furniture.
As the key was in the door, and as Balsamo had entered without knocking, he interrupted Marat in his occupation. Marat, at the sight of the master, blushed much more deeply than was becoming in a true stoic.
“You see, master,” said he, stealthily throwing the tell-tale cloth behind a curtain, “I am a domestic man, and assist this good woman. It is from preference that I choose this task, which is, perhaps, not quite plebeian, but it is still less aristocratic.”
“It is that of a poor young man who loves cleanliness,” said Balsamo, coldly, “nothing more. Are you ready, sir? You know my moments are precious.”
“I have only to slip on my coat, sir. Dame Grivette, my coat! She is my portress, sir — my footman, my cook, my housekeeper, and she costs me one crown a month.”
“Economy is praiseworthy,” said Balsamo; “it is the wealth of the poor, and the wisdom of the rich.”
“My hat and cane!” said Marat.
“Stretch out your hand,” said Balsamo; “there is your hat, and no doubt this cane which, hangs beside your hat is yours.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon, sir; I am quite confused.”
“Are you ready?”
“Yes, sir. My watch. Dame Grivette!”
Dame Grivette bustled about the room as if in search of something, but did not reply.
“You have no occasion for a watch, sir, to go to the amphitheater and the hospital; it will perhaps not be easily found, and that would cause some delay.”
“But, sir, I attach great value to my watch, which is an excellent one, and which I bought with my savings.”
“In your absence, Dame Grivette will look for it,” replied Balsamo with a smile; “and if she searches carefully, it will be found when you return.”
“Oh, certainly,” said Dame Grivette. “It will be found unless monsieur has left it somewhere else. Nothing is lost here.”
“You see,” said Balsamo. “Come, sir, come!”
Harat did not venture to persist, and followed Balsamo, grumbling.
When they reached the door. Balsamo said:
“Where shall we go first?”
“To the lecture-room, if you please, master; I have marked a subject which must have died last night of acute meningitis. I want to make some observations on the brain, and I do not wish my colleagues to take it from me.”
“Then let us go to the amphitheater, Monsieur Marat.”
“Moreover, it is only a few yards from here; the amphitheater is close to the hospital, and I shall only have to go in for a moment; you may even wait for me at the door.”
“On the contrary, I wish to accompany you inside, and hear your opinion of this subject.”
“When it was alive, sir?”
“No, since it has become a corpse.”
“Take care,” said Marat, smiling; “I may gain a point over you, for I am well acquainted with this part of my profession and am said to be a skillful anatomist.”
“Pride! pride! ever pride!” murmured Balsamo.
“What do you say?” asked Marat.
“I say that we shall see, sir,” replied Balsamo. “Let us enter.”
Marat preceded Balsamo in the narrow alley lending to the amphitheater, which was situated at the extremity of the Rue Hautefeuille. Balsamo followed him unhesitatingly until they reached a long narrow room, where two corpses, a male and a female, lay stretched upon a marble table.
The woman had died young; the man was old and bald. A soiled sheet was thrown over their bodies, leaving their faces half uncovered.
They were lying side by side upon this cold bed; they who had perhaps never met before in the world, and whose souls, then voyaging in eternity, must, could they have looked down on earth, have been struck with wonderment at the proximity of their mortal remains.
Marat, with a single movement, raised and threw aside the coarse linen which covered the two bodies, whom death had thus made equal before the anatomist’s scalpel.
“Is not the sight of the dead repugnant to your feelings?” asked Marat in his usual boasting manner.
“It makes me sad.” replied Balsamo.
“Want of custom,” said Marat. “I, who see this sight daily, feel neither sadness nor disgust. We practitioners live with the dead, and do not interrupt any of the functions of our existence on their account.”
“It is a sad privilege of your profession, sir.”
“Besides,” added Marat, “why should I be sad, or feel disgust? In the first case, reflection forbids it; in the second, custom.”
“Explain your ideas,” said Balsamo; “I do not understand you clearly. Reflection first.”
“Well, why should I be afraid? Why should I fear an inert mass — a statue of flesh instead of stone, marble, or granite?”
“In short, you think there is nothing in a corpse.”
“Nothing — absolutely nothing.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I am sure of it.”
“But in the living body.”
“There is motion,” said Marat, proudly.
“And the soul? — you do not speak of it, sir.”
“I have never found it in the bodies which I have dissected.”
“Because you have only dissected corpses.”
“Oh no, sir! I have frequently operated upon living bodies.”
“And you have found nothing more in them than in the corpses?”
“Yes, I have found pain. Do you call pain the soul?”
“Then you do not believe in it?”
“In what?”
“In the soul?”
“I believe in it, because I am at liberty to call it motion if I wish.”
“That is well. You believe in the soul; that is all I asked; I am glad you believe in it.”
“One moment, master. Let us understand each other, and above all, let us not exaggerate,” said Marat, with his serpent smile. “We practitioners are rather disposed to materialism.”
“These bodies are very cold,” said Balsamo, dreamily, “and this woman was very beautiful.”
“Why, yes.”
“A lovely soul would have been suitable in this lovely body.”
“Ah! there is the mistake in Him who created her. A beautiful scabbard, but a vile sword. This corpse, master, is that of a wretched woman who had just left Saint Lazarus, when she died of cerebral inflammation in the Hotel Dieu. Her history is long, and tolerably scandalous. If you call the motive power which impelled this creature soul you wrong our souls, which must be of the same essence, since they are derived from the same source.”
“Her soul should have been cured,” said Balsamo; “it was lost for want of the only Physician who is indispensable — the Physician of the Soul.”
“Alas, master, that is another of your theories. Medicine is only for the body,” replied Marat, with a bitter smile. “Now you have a word on your lips which Moliere has often employed in his comedies, and it is this word which makes you smile.”
“No.” said Balsamo, “you mistake; you cannot guess why I smile. What we concluded just now was, that these corpses are void, was it not?”
“And insensible,” added Marat, raising the young woman’s head, and letting it fall noisily upon the marble, while the body neither moved nor shuddered.
“Very well,” said Balsamo; “let us now go, to the hospital.”
“Wait one moment, master. I entreat you, until I have separated from the trunk this head, which I am most anxious to have, as it was the seat of a very curious disease. Will you allow me?”
“Do you ask?” said Balsamo.
Marat opened his case, took from it a bistoury, and picked up in a corner a large wooden mallet stained with blood. Then with a practiced hand he made a circular incision which separated all the flesh and the muscles of the neck, and having thus reached the bone, he slipped his bistoury between the juncture of the vertebral column, and struck a sharp blow upon it with the mallet.
The head rolled upon the table, and from the table upon the floor; Marat was obliged to seize it with his damp hands. Balsamo turned away, not to give too much joy to the triumphant operator.
“One day.” said Marat, who thought he had hit the master in a weak point—” one day some philanthropist will occupy himself with the details of death as others do of life, and will invent a machine which shall sever a head at a single blow, and cause instantaneous annihilation, which no other instrument of death does. The wheel, quartering, and hanging, are punishments suitable for savages, but not for civilized people. An enlightened nation, as France is, should punish, but not revenge. Those who condemn to the wheel, who hang or quarter, revenge themselves upon the criminal by inflicting pain before punishing him by death, which, in my opinion, is too much by half.”
“And in mine also, sir. But what kind of an instrument do you mean?”
“I can fancy a machine cold and impassible as the law itself. The man who is charged with fulfilling the last office is moved at the sight of his fellow man, and sometimes strikes badly, as it happened to the Duke of Monmouth and to Chalais. This could not be the case with a machine — with two arms of oak wielding a cutlass, for instance.”
“ And do you believe, sir, that because the knife would pass with the rapidity of lightning between the base of the occiput and the trapezoid muscles, that death would be instantaneous, and the pain momentary?”
“Certainly; death would be instantaneous, for the iron would sever the nerves which cause motion at a blow. The pain would be momentary, for the blade would separate the brain, which is the seat of the feelings, from the heart, which is the center of life.”
“Sir,” said Balsamo, “the punishment of decapitation exists in Germany.”
“Yes, but by the sword; and, as I said before, a man’s hand may tremble.”
“Such a machine exists in Italy; an arm of oak wields it. It is called the mannaja.”
“‘Well?”
“Well, sir. I have seen criminals, decapitated by the executioner, raise their headless bodies from the bench on which they were seated, and stagger five or six paces off where they fell. I have picked up heads which had rolled to the foot of the mannaja, as that head you are holding by the hair has just rolled from the marble table, and on pronouncing in their ears the name by which those persons had been called, I have seen the eyes open again and turn in their orbit, in their endeavors to see who had called them back again to earth.”
“A nervous movement — nothing else.”
“Are the nerves not the organs of sensibility?”
“What do you conclude from that, sir?”
“I conclude that it would be better, instead of inventing a machine which kills to punish, that man should seek a means of punishing without killing. The society which will invent this means will assuredly be the best and the most enlightened of societies.”
“Utopias again! always Utopias!” said Marat.
“Perhaps you are right,” said Balsamo; “time will show. But did you not speak of the hospital? Let us go!”
“Come, then,” said Marat; and he tied the woman’s head in his pocket-handkerchief, carefully knotting the four corners. “Now I am sure, at least,” said he, as he left the hall, “that my comrades will only have my leavings.”
They took the way to the Hotel Dieu — the dreamer and the practician, side by side.
“You have cub off this head very coolly and very skillfully, sir,” said Balsamo; “do you feel less emotion when you operate upon the living than the dead? Does the sight of suffering affect you more than that of immobility? Have you more pity for living bodies than for corpses?”
“No; that would be as great a fault as for the executioner to be moved. You may kill a man by cutting his thigh unskillfully, just as well as by severing the head from the body. A good surgeon operates with his hand, not with his heart; though he knows well at the same time, in his heart, that for one moment of suffering he gives years of life and health. That is the fair side of our profession, master.”
“Yes, sir; but in the living bodies you meet with the soul, I hope.”
“Yes, if you will agree with me that the soul is motion, or sensibility. Yes, certainly, I meet with it; and it is very troublesome, too; for it kills far more patients than any scalpel.”
They had by this time arrived at the threshold of the Hotel Dieu, and now entered the hospital. Guided by Marat, who still carried his ominous burden, Balsamo penetrated to the hall where the operations were performed, in which the head-surgeon and the students in surgery were assembled. The attendant had just brought in a young man who had been run over the preceding week by a heavy carriage, the wheel of which had crushed his foot. A hasty operation, performed upon the limb when benumbed by pain, had not been sufficient; the inflammation had rapidly extended, and the amputation of the leg had now become urgent.
The unfortunate man, stretched upon his bed of anguish, looked with a horror which would have melted tigers at the band of eager students who were watching for the moment of his martyrdom, perhaps of his death, that they might study the science of life — that marvelous phenomenon behind which lies the gloomy phenomenon of death.
He seemed to implore a pitying look, a smile, a word of encouragement from each of the students and attendants, but the beatings of his heart were responded to only by indifference, his beseeching looks with glances of iron. A surviving emotion of pride kept him silent. He reserved all his strength for the cries which pain would soon ring from him. But when he felt the heavy hand of the attendant upon his shoulder, when the arms of the assistants twined around him like the serpents of Laocoon, when he heard the operator’s voice cry, “Courage!” the unfortunate man ventured to break the silence, and asked in a plaintive voice:
“Shall I suffer much?”
“Oh, no, make your mind easy,” replied Marat, with a, hypocritical smile, which was affectionate to the patient, but ironical to Balsamo.
Marat saw that Balsamo had understood him; he approached and whispered:
“It is a dreadful operation. The bone is full of cracks and fearfully sensitive. He will die, not of the wound, but of the pain. That is what the soul does for this poor man.”
“Then why do you operate? why do you not let him die in peace?”
“Because it is the surgeon’s duty to attempt a cure, even when the cure seems impossible.”
“And you say he will suffer?”
“Fearfully.”“
“And that his soul is the cause?”
“His soul, which has too much sympathy with the body.”
“Then, why not operate upon the soul? Perhaps the tranquillity of the one would cause the cure of the other.”
“I have done so,” said Marat, while the attendants continued to bind the patient.
“You have prepared his soul?”
“Yes.”
“How so?”
“As one always does, by words. I spoke to his soul, his intelligence, his sensibility — to that organ which caused the Greek philosopher to exclaim, ‘Pain, thou art no evil’ — the language suitable for it. I said to him; ‘You will not suffer.’ That is the only remedy hitherto known, as regards the soul — falsehood! Why is this she-devil of a soul connected with the body? When I cut off this head just now, the body said nothing, yet the operation was a serious one. But motion had ceased, sensibility was extinguished, the soul had fled, as you spiritualists say. This is the reason why the head I severed said nothing, why the body which I mutilated allowed me to do so; while this body which is yet inhabited by a soul — for a short time indeed, but still inhabited — will cry out fearfully. Stop your ears well, master, you who are moved by this union of body and soul, which will always destroy your theory until you succeed in isolating the body from the soul.”
“And you believe we shall never arrive at this isolation?”
“Try,” said Marat, “this is an excellent opportunity.”
“Well, yes, you are right,” said Balsamo; “the opportunity is a good one, and I will make the attempt.”
“Yes, try.”
“I will.”
“How so?”
“This young man interests me; he shall not suffer.”
“You are an illustrious chief,” said Marat, “but you are not the Almighty, and you cannot prevent this wretch from suffering.”
“If he were not to feel the pain, do you think he would recover?”
“His recovery would be more probable, but not certain.”
Balsamo cast an inexpressible look of triumph upon Marat, and placing himself before the young patient, whose frightened eyes, already dilated with the anguish of terror, met his;
“Sleep,” said he, not alone with his lips, but with his look, with his will — with all the heat of his blood, all the vital energy of his body.
The head surgeon was just commencing to feel the injured leg, and to point out the aggravated nature of the case to his students; but, at Balsamo’s command, the young man, who had raised himself upon his seat, oscillated for a moment in the arms of his attendants, his head drooped, and his eyes closed.
“He is ill.” said Marat.
“No, sir.”
“But do you not see that he loses consciousness?”
“He is sleeping.”
“What! he sleeps?”
“Yes.”
Every one turned to look at the strange physician, whom they took for a madman. An incredulous smile hovered on Marat’s lips.
“Is it usual for people to talk while in a swoon?” asked Balsamo.
“No.”
“Well! question him — he will reply.”
“Hallo! young man!” cried Marat.
“You need not speak so loud,” said Balsamo; “speak in your usual voice.”
“Tell us what is the matter with you.”
“I was ordered to sleep, and I do sleep,” replied the patient.
His voice was perfectly calm, and formed a strange contrast to that they had heard a few moments before.
All the attendants looked at each other.
“Now,” said Balsamo, “release him.”
“That is impossible.” said the head surgeon; “the slightest movement will spoil the operation.”
“He will not stir.”
“Who can assure me of that?”
“I and he also — ask him.”
“Can you be left untied, my friend?”
“Yes.”
“And will you promise not to move?”
“I will promise it, if you command me.”
“I command it.”
“Faith! sir, you speak so positively that I am tempted to make the trial.”
“Do so, sir; and fear nothing.”
“Untie him.”
The assistants obeyed.
Balsamo advanced to the bedside.
“From this moment,” said he, “do not stir until I order you.”
A carved statue upon a tombstone could not have been more motionless than the patient, upon this injunction.
“Now operate, sir,” said Balsamo; “the patient is quite ready.”
The surgeon took his bistoury; but, when upon the point of using it, he hesitated.
“Cut, sir! cut!” said Balsamo, with the air of an inspired prophet.
And the surgeon, yielding — like Marat, like the patient, like every one present — to the irresistible influence of Balsamo’s words, raised the knife. The sound of the knife passing through the flesh was heard, but the patient never stirred, nor even uttered a sigh.
“From what country do you come, my friend?” asked Balsamo.
“I am a Breton, sir.” replied the patient, smiling.
“And you love your country?”
“Oh! sir, it is so beautiful!”
In the meantime the surgeon was making the circular incisions in the flesh, by means of which, in amputations, the bone is laid bare.
“You quitted it when young?” asked Balsamo. — —”At ten years of age, sir.”
The incisions were made — the surgeon placed the saw on the bone.
“My friend,” said Balsamo, “sing me that song which the salt-makers of Batz chant as they return to their homes after the day’s work is over. I can only remember the first line; “‘My salt covered o’er with its mantle of foam.’”
The saw was now severing the bone; but at Balsamo’s command the patient smiled, and commenced, in a low, melodious, ecstatic voice, like a lover or like a poet, the following verses:
“‘My salt covered o’er with its mantle of foam,
The lake of pure azure that mirrors my home,
My stove where the peats ever cheerfully burn,
And the honeyed wheat-cake which awaits my return. —
“‘The wife of my bosom — my silver-haired sire —
My urchins who sport round the clear evening fire —
And there, where the wild flowers, in brightest of bloom.
Their fragrance diffuse round my loved mother’s tomb. —
“‘Blest, blest be ye all! — Now the day’s task is o’er,
And I stand once again at my own cottage door;
And richly will love my brief absence repay.
And the calm joys of eve the rude toils of the day.’”
The leg fell upon the bed while the patient was singing.