Body and Soul.
EVERY ONE looked with astonishment at the patient — with admiration at the surgeon. Some said that both were mad. Marat communicated this opinion to Balsamo in a whisper.
“Terror has made the poor devil lose his senses,” said he; “that is why he feels no pain.”
“I think not,” replied Balsamo; “and far from having lost his senses, I am sure that if I asked him he could tell us the day of his death, if he is to die, or the period of his convalescence, if he is to recover.”
Marat was almost inclined to adopt the general opinion — that Balsamo was as mad as his patient. In the meantime, however, the surgeon was tying up the arteries, from which spouted streams of blood.
Balsamo drew a small phial from his pocket, poured a few drops of the liquid it contained upon a little ball of lint, and begged the chief surgeon to apply the lint to the arteries. The latter obeyed with a certain feeling of curiosity. He was one of the most celebrated practitioners of that period — a man truly enamored of his profession, who repudiated none of its mysteries, and for whom chance was but the makeshift of doubt.
He applied the lint to the artery, which quivered, bubbled, and then only allowed the blood to escape drop by drop. He could now tie up the artery with the greatest facility.
This time Balsamo obtained an undoubted triumph, and all present asked him where he had studied, and of what school he was.
“I am a German physician of the school of Gottingen,” replied he, “and I have made this discovery you have just witnessed. However, gentlemen and fellow practitioners, I wish this discovery to remain a secret for the present, as I have a wholesome terror of the stake, and the parliament of Paris might perhaps resume their functions once more for the pleasure of condemning a sorcerer.”
The chief surgeon was still plunged in a reverie. Marat also seemed thoughtful, but he was the first to break the silence.
“You said just now,” said he, “that if you were to question this man about the result of this operation he would reply truly, though the result is still veiled in futurity.”
“I assert it again,” replied Balsamo.
“Well, let us have the proof.”
“What is this poor fellow’s name?”
“Havard,” replied Marat.
Balsamo turned to the patient, whose lips were yet murmuring the last words of the plaintive air.
“Well, my friend,” asked he, “what do you augur from the state of this poor Havard?”
“What do I augur from his state?” replied the patient; “stay, I must return from Brittany, where I was, to the Hotel Dieu, where be is.”
“Just so; eater, look at him and tell me the truth respecting him.”
“Oh! he is very ill; his leg has been cut off.”
“Indeed?” said Balsamo. “And has the operation been successful?”
“Exceedingly so; but —
The patient’s face darkened.
“But what?” asked Balsamo.
“But,” resumed the patient, “he has a terrible trial to pass through. The fever—”
“When will it commence?”
“At seven o’clock this evening.”
All the spectators looked at each other.
“And this fever?” asked Balsamo.
“Oh! it will make him very ill; but he will recover from the first attack.”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Then, after this first attack, will he be saved?”
“Alas! no,” said the wounded man, sighing.
“Will the fever return, then?”
“Oh, yes! and more severely than before. Poor Havard! poor Havard!” he continued, “he has a wife and several children.” And his eyes filled with tears.
“Must his wife be a widow, then, and his children orphans?” asked Balsamo.
“Wait! wait!”
He clasped his hands.
“No, no,” he exclaimed, his features lighting up with an expression of sublime faith; “no, his wife and children have prayed, and their prayers have found favor in the sight of God!”
“Then he will recover?”
“Yes.”
“You hear, gentlemen.” said Balsamo, “he will recover.”
“Ask him in how many days.” said Marat.
“In how many days, do you say?”
“Yes; you said he could indicate the phases, and the duration of his convalescence.”
“I ask nothing better than to question him on the subject.”
“Well, then, question him now.”
“And when do you think Havard will recover?” said Balsamo.
“Oh! his cure will take a long time — a month, six weeks, two months. He entered this hospital five days ago, and he will leave it two months and fourteen days after having entered.”
“And he will leave it cured?”
“Yes.”
“But,” said Marat, “unable to work, and consequently to maintain his wife and children.”
Havard again clasped his hands.
“Oh! God is good; God will provide for him!”
“ And how will God provide for him?” asked Marat. “As I am in the way of hearing something new to-day, I might as well hear that.” “God has sent to his bedside a charitable man who has taken pity upon him, and who has said to himself, ‘Poor Havard shall not want.’”
The spectators were amazed; Balsamo smiled.
“Ha! this is in truth a strange scene,” said the chief surgeon, at the same time taking the patient’s hand, feeling his chest and forehead; “this man is dreaming.”
“Do you think so?” said Balsamo.
Then, darting upon the sick man a look of authority and energy:
“Awake, Havard!” said he.
The young man opened his eyes with some difficulty, and gazed with profound surprise upon all these spectators, who had so soon laid aside their threatening character, and assumed an inoffensive one toward him.
“Well,” said he sadly, “have you not operated yet? Are you going to make me suffer still more?”
Balsamo replied hastily. He feared the invalid’s emotion. But there was no need for such haste; the surprise of all the spectators was so great that none would have anticipated him.
“My friend,” said he, “be calm. The head-surgeon has operated upon your leg in such a manner as to satisfy all the requirements of your position. It seems, my poor fellow, that you are not very strong-minded, for you fainted at the first incision.”
“Oh! so much the better,” said the Breton smilingly; “I felt nothing, and my sleep was even sweet and refreshing. What happiness — my leg will not be cut off!”
But just at that moment the poor man looked down, and saw the bed full of blood, and his amputated leg lying near him. He uttered a scream, and this time fainted in reality.
“Now question him,” said Balsamo coldly to Marat; “you will see if he replies.”
Then, taking the head-surgeon aside, while the nurses carried the poor young man back to his bed:
“Sir,” said Balsamo, “you heard what your poor patient said?”
“Yes, sir, that he would recover.”
“He said something else; he said that God would take pity upon him, and would send him wherewithal to support his wife and children.”
“Well?”
“Well, sir, he told the truth on this point, as on the others. Only you must undertake to be the charitable medium of affording him this assistance. Here is a diamond, worth about twenty thousand livres; when the poor man is cured, sell it and give him the proceeds. In the meantime, since the soul, as your pupil M. Marat said very truly, has a great influence upon the body, tell Havard as soon as he is restored to consciousness that his future comfort and that of his children is secured.”
“But, sir,” said the surgeon, hesitating to take the ring which Balsamo offered him, “if he should not recover?”
“He will recover.”
“Then allow me at least to give you a receipt.”—”Sir!”
“That is the only condition upon which I can receive a jewel of such value.”
“Do as you think right, sir.”
“Your name, if you please?”
“The Count de Fenix.”
The surgeon passed into the adjoining apartment, while Marat, overwhelmed, confounded, but still struggling against the evidence of his senses, approached Balsamo.
In five minutes the surgeon returned, holding in his hand the following receipt, which he gave Balsamo:
“I have received from the Count de Fenix a diamond, which he affirms to be worth twenty thousand livres, the price of which is to be given to the man Havard when he leaves the Hotel Dieu.
“This 15th of September, 1771.
“GUILLOTIN. M.D.”
Balsamo bowed to the doctor, took the receipt, and left the room, followed by Marat.
“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 Rue 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.”
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 farther 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 physician, 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.”
“Involuntary, 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.”
“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 you abstracted the soul momentarily from the body?”
“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 knife, 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, ‘This 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.”
“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 opaqueness 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.”
“It would be presumptuous 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 forgetfulness 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 you 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.