第50章

"Her mind is sound; she is a saint," replied the old man."You will presently think I am mad when I tell you all.Monsieur, my only child, my daughter was born of a mother in excellent health.I never in my life loved but one woman, the one I married.I married the daughter of one of the bravest colonels of the Imperial guard, Tarlowski, a Pole, formerly on the staff of the Emperor.The functions that I exercised in my high position demanded the utmost purity of life and morals; but I have never had room in my heart for many feelings, and I faithfully loved my wife, who deserved such love.I am a father in like manner as I was a husband, and that is telling you all in one word.My daughter never left her mother; no 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 Iwas 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.