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Mysteries of Paris, V3

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"To take Cecily from me! But they do not know that, by concentrating all
the power of one's faculties on a single object, the impracticable is
gained. Thus, directly, I am going to the chamber of Cecily, where I have
not dared to go since her departure. Oh, to see, to touch the vestments
which have belonged to her; the glass before which she dressed--it will be
to see herself! Yes; by fixing my eyes on this glass, soon shall I see
Cecily appear. It will not be an illusion--a mist; it will be she; I shall
find her there, as the sculptor finds the statue in the block of marble."

"Where are you going to?" said Polidori, hearing Jacques Ferrand getting up
from his bed, for the most profound obscurity still reigned in the
apartment.

"I go to find Cecily."

"You shall not go. The sight of her chamber will kill you."

"Cecily awaits me there."

"You shall not go--I hold you," said Polidori, seizing the notary by the
arm.

Jacques Ferrand, arrived at the last stage of weakness, could not struggle
against Polidori, who held him with a vigorous hand.

"You wish to prevent me from going to find Cecily?"

"Yes; and, besides, there is a lamp lighted in the next room; you know what
effect the light produced just now upon your sight!"

"Cecily is there; she awaits me. I would traverse a blazing furnace to join
her. Let me go. She told me I was her old tiger. Take care, my claws are
sharp."

"You shall not go. I will rather tie you on your bed as a madman."

"Polidori, listen; I am not mad--I have all my reason. I know very well
that Cecily is not materially there; but for me, the phantoms of my
imagination are worth more than realities."

"Silence!" cried Polidori, suddenly, listening; "just now I thought I heard
a carriage stop at the door. I was not mistaken. I hear now the sound of
voices in the court."

"You wish to distract my thoughts. The trick is too plain."

"I hear some one speak, I tell you, and I think I recognize---"

"You wish to deceive me," said Ferrand, interrupting Polidori; "I am not
your dupe."

"But, wretch, listen then--listen. Ah! do you not hear?"

"Let me go--Cecily is there--she calls me. Do not make me angry, in my
turn, I tell you. Take care--do you understand? take care."

"You shall not go out."

"Take care---"

"You shall not go out from here; it is my interest that you should remain."

"You prevent me from going to find Cecily; my interest wills that you
should die. Hold then!" said the notary, in a hollow voice.

Polidori uttered a cry.

"Scoundrel! you have stabbed me in the arm; but the wound is slight; you
shall not escape me."

"Your wound is mortal. It is the poisoned dagger of Cecily which has
stabbed you; I always carried it about me; await the effects of the poison.
Ah! you loosen your grasp; you are going to die. You should not have
hindered me from going to find Cecily," added Jacques Ferrand, feeling in
the dark for the door.

"Oh!" murmured Polidori, "my arm stiffens--a mortal coldness seizes me--my
knees tremble under me--my blood thickens in my veins--my head turns.
Help!" cried the accomplice of Ferrand, collecting all his strength for a
last cry; "help! I die!"

And he sunk under his own weight upon the floor. The crash of a glass door,
opened with so much violence that several panes were broken to pieces, the
ringing voice of Rudolph, and a noise of hasty footsteps, seemed to respond
to Polidori's cry of anguish. Jacques Ferrand, having at length found the
lock in the dark, opened the door leading into an adjoining apartment, and
rushed into it, his dangerous weapon in his hand. At the same moment,
threatening and formidable as the genius of vengeance, the prince entered
the room from the opposite side.

"Monster!" cried Rudolph, advancing toward Jacques Ferrand, "it is my
daughter whom you have killed! You are going--"

The prince did not finish; he recoiled alarmed. One would have said that
his words had pierced Jacques Ferrand. Throwing his poniard aside, and
placing both his hands before his eyes, the wretch fell with his face to
the floor, uttering a howl that was anything but human. In consequence of
the phenomenon of which we have spoken, of which a profound darkness had
suspended the action, when Jacques Ferrand entered this chamber brilliantly
lighted, he was struck with a vertigo, similar to that which we have
already described, more intolerable than if he had been exposed to a
torrent of light as incandescent as that of the disk of the sun. And the
agony of this man was a fearful spectacle; he writhed in frightful
convulsions, tearing the floor with his nails, as if he wished to dig a
hole to escape from the horrible tortures caused by this glaring light.
Rudolph, one of his servants, and the porter of the house, who had been
compelled to conduct the prince to this apartment, were transfixed with
horror. Notwithstanding his just horror, Rudolph felt an emotion of pity
for the unheard-of suffering of Jacques Ferrand; he ordered him to be laid
on a sofa. This was not done without difficulty; for, fearing to be
submitted again to the direct action of the light, the notary struggled
violently, but when it streamed in his face he uttered another yell, which
filled Rudolph with terror. After protracted torments, these attacks
ceased, exhausted by their own violence. Arrived at the mortal period of
his delirium, he remembered still the words of Cecily, who had called him
her tiger; by degrees, his mind again wandered; he imagined himself a
tiger! Crouched in one of the corners of the room, as in his den, his
hoarse, furious cries, the grinding of his teeth, the spasmodic contortions
of the muscles of his forehead and face, his glaring look, gave him a vague
and frightful resemblance to this ferocious beast.

"Tiger--tiger--tiger I am," said he, in a broken voice, gathering himself
up in a heap; "yes, tiger. How much blood! In my lair--corpses--torn to
pieces! La Goualeuse--the brother of this widow--the child of Louise--here
are corpses; my tigress Cecily shall take her share." Then looking at his
bony fingers, of which the nails had grown very long during his illness, he
added these words: "Oh! my sharp nails: an old tiger I am, but more active,
and strong, and bold. No one shall dare dispute my tigress, Cecily. Ah! she
calls! she calls!" said he, looking around, and seeming to listen. After a
moment's pause, he groped his way along the wall, saying, "No; I thought I
heard her; she is not there, but I see her, oh! always, always! Oh! there
she is! She calls me--she roars--she roars there! I come, I come."

And Jacques Ferrand dragged himself toward the middle of the chamber on his
hands and knees. Although his strength was exhausted, from time to time he
advanced by a convulsive spring: then he would pause, seeming to listen
attentively.

"Where is she? where is she? I approach, she flies. Ah! there; oh! she
awaits me; go; go, Cecily, your old tiger is yours," cried he.

And with a desperate effort he succeeded in getting on his knees. But,
suddenly, falling backward with alarm, his body crouched on his heels, his
hair standing on end, his look wild, his mouth distorted with terror, his
hands stretched out, he seemed to struggle with age against an invisible
object, and cried, in a broken voice, "What a bite--help--my arms break--I
cannot take it off--sharp teeth. No, no, oh! not the eyes--help--a black
serpent--oh! its flat head--its burning eyeballs. It looks at me--it is
the devil. Ah! he knows me--Jacques Ferrand--at the church--holy
man--always at the church-avaunt!" And the notary, raising himself a little
and sustaining himself with one hand on the floor, tried with the other to
make the sign of the cross.

His livid face was covered with sweat, and all the symptoms of approaching
death were manifested. He fell immediately backward, stiff and inanimate;
his eyes seemed to start from their sockets; horrible convulsions stamped
his features with unearthly contortions, like those forced from dead bodies
by a galvanic battery; a bloody foam inundated his lips, and the life of
this monster became extinct in the midst of one of his horrid visions, for
he muttered these words: "Night--dark! dark specters--brazen skeletons--
red-hot--twine around me their burning fingers--my flesh smokes--specter--
bloody--no! no--Cecily--fire--Cecily!" Such were the last words of Jacques
Ferrand.




CHAPTER XVII.

THE HOSPITAL.


It will be remembered that Fleur-de-Marie, saved by La Louve, had been
conveyed to the country house of Dr. Griffon, [Footnote: The name which I
have the honor to bear, which my father, grandfather, grand-uncle, and
great grandfather--one of the most learned men of the seventeenth
century--have rendered celebrated by works on theoretical and practical
medicine, would forbid me from any attack, or hasty reflection, concerning
physicians; even though the gravity of the subject upon which I treat, and
the just and deserved celebrity of the French Medical School, did not
prevent me. In Dr. Griffon I have only wished to personify one, otherwise
respectable, who allows himself to be carried away the ardor of art, and
led to make experiments which are a serious abuse medical power (if I may
express myself in this manner), forgetting that there is something more
sacred than Science--Humanity.] not far from Ravageurs' Island. The worthy
doctor, one of the physicians of the City Hospital where we shall conduct
our readers, who had obtained this situation through a powerful interest,
regarded his ward as a sort of place where he experimented on the poor the
treatment which he applied afterward to his rich patients, never hazarding
on the last any new cures before having first tried and retried the
application _in anima vili_, as he said, with that kind of passionless
barbarity which a blind love for science produces. Thus, if the doctor
wished to convince himself of the comparative effect of some new and
hazardous treatment, in order to be able to deduce consequences favorable
to such or such system, he took a certain number of patients, treated some
according to the new system, others by the ancient method. Under some
circumstances, be abandoned others to the care of nature. After which he
counted the survivors. These terrible experiments were, truly, a human
sacrifice on the altar of science. Dr. Griffon did not seem to think of
this. In the eyes of this prince of science (as they phrase it) the
patients of his hospital were only subjects for study and experiment; and
as, after all, there resulted sometimes from these essays _in anima
vili_ a fact or discovery useful to science, the doctor showed himself
as entirely satisfied and triumphant as a general after a victory
sufficiently costly in soldiers.

Homeopathy had never a more violent adversary than Dr. Griffon. He look
upon this method as absurd and homicidal; thus, strong in his convictions,
and wishing, as he said, to drive the homeopathists to the wall, he offered
to abandon to their care a certain number of patients, on whom they might
experiment to their liking. But he affirmed in advance, sure of not being
contradicted by the result, that, out of twenty patients submitted to this
treatment, not over five, at the outside would survive. The homeopathists
gave the go-by to this proposition, to the great chagrin of the doctor, who
regretted the loss of this occasion to prove, by figures, the vanity of
homeopathic practice. Dr. Griffon would have been stupefied if any one had
said to him, in reference to this free and autocratic disposition of his
subjects:

"Such a state of things would cause the barbarism of those days to be
regretted when condemned criminals were exposed to undergo newly-discovered
surgical operations; operations which they dared not practice on the
uncondemned. If it were successful, the condemned was pardoned. Compared
to what you do, sir, this barbarity was charity. After all, a chance for
life was thus given to a poor creature for whom the executioner was
waiting, and an experiment was rendered possible which might be useful
to all. But to try your hazardous medicaments on unfortunate artisans,
for whom the hospital is the sole refuge when sickness overtakes them;
to try a treatment, perhaps fatal, on people whom poverty confides to
you, trusting and powerless; to you, their only hope; to you, who will
only answer for their life to God--do you know that this is to push the
love of science to inhumanity, sir? How! the poorer classes already
people the workshops, the field, the army; in this world they only know
misery and privations; and when, at the end of their sufferings and
fatigues, they fall exhausted--half-dead--sickness even does not preserve
them from a last and sacrilegious "experiment!" I ask your heart, sir,
would not this be unjust and cruel?"

Alas! Dr. Griffon would have been touched, perhaps, by these severe words,
but not convinced. Man is made the creature of circumstances. The captain
thus accustoms himself to consider his soldiers as nothing more than the
pawns of the bloody game called battle. And it is because man is thus made,
that society ought to protect those whom fate exposes to the action of
these "humane necessities." Now the character of Dr. Griffon once admitted
(and it can be admitted without much hyperbole), the inmates of this
hospital had then no guarantee, no recourse against the scientific
barbarity of his experiments; for there exists a grievous hiatus in the
organization of the civil hospitals. We will point it out here, so that we
may be understood. Military hospitals are each day visited by a superior
officer charged to receive the complaints of the sick soldiers, and to
attend to them if they appear reasonable. This oversight completely
distinct from the government of the hospital, is excellent--it has always
produced the best results. It is, besides, impossible to see establishments
better kept than the military hospitals; the soldiers are nursed with much
care, and treated, we would say, almost with respectful commiseration. Why
not have a similar superintendence established in the civil hospitals, by
men completely independent of the government and medical faculty? The
complaints of the poor (if they were well founded) would thus have an
impartial organ, while at present this organ is absolutely wanting. Thus
the doors of the hospital of Dr. Griffon once shut on a patient, he
belonged body and soul to science. No friendly or disinterested ear can
hear his grief. He is told plainly that, being admitted out of charity, he
becomes henceforth a part of the experimental domain of the doctor, and
that patient and malady must serve as subjects of study and observation,
analysis, or instruction, to the young students who accompany assiduously
the visits of M. Griffon. In effect, the subject soon had to answer to
interrogations often the most painful, the most sorrowful; and that, not to
the doctor alone, who like the priest, fulfills a duty, and has the right
to know everything--no, he must reply in a loud voice before a curious and
greedy crowd of students. Yes, in this pandemonium of science, old or
young, maid or wife, were obliged to abjure every feeling or sentiment of
shame, and to make the most confidential communications, submit to the most
material investigations, before a numerous public; and almost always these
cruel formalities aggravated their disease. And this is neither humane nor
just; it is because the poor enter the hospital in the holy name of
charity, that they should be treated with compassion and with respect, for
misfortune has its dignity.

On reading the following lines, it will be perceived why we have caused
them to be preceded by these reflections. Nothing could be more sad than
the nocturnal aspect of the vast ward of the hospital, where we will
introduce our readers. Along the whole length of its gloomy walls were
ranged two parallel rows of beds, vaguely lighted by the sepulchral
glimmering of a lamp suspended from the ceiling; the narrow windows were
barred with iron, like a prison's. The atmosphere is so sickening, so
filled with disease, that the new patients did not often become acclimated
without danger: this increase of suffering is a kind of premium which every
new-comer inevitably pays for a hospital residence. The air of this immense
hall is, then, heavy and corrupted. At intervals, the silence of night is
interrupted, now by plaintive moans, now by profound sighs, uttered by the
feverish sleepers; then all is quiet, and naught is heard but the regular
and monotonous tickings of a large clock, which strikes the hours, so long
for sleepless suffering. One of the extremities of this hall was almost
plunged into obscurity. Suddenly was heard a great stir, and the noise of
rapid footsteps; a door was opened and shut several times; a sister of
charity, whose large white cap and black dress were visible from the light
which she carried in her hand, approached one of the last beds on the right
side of the hall. Some of the patients, awaking with a start, sat up in
bed, attentive to what was passing. Soon the folding doors were opened. A
priest entered, bearing a crucifix--the two sisters knelt. By the pale
light which shone like a glory around this bed, while the other parts of
the hall remained in obscurity, the almoner of the hospital was seen
leaning over this couch of misery, pronouncing some words, the slow sounds
of which were lost in the silence of night. At the end of a quarter of an
hour the priest took a sheet, which he threw over the bed.

Then he retired. One of the kneeling sisters arose, closed the curtains,
and returned to her prayers alongside of her companion. Then everything
became once more silent. One of the patients had just died. Among the women
who did not sleep, and who had witnessed this mute scene, were three
persons whose names have already been mentioned in the course of this
history: Mademoiselle de Fermont, daughter of the unhappy widow ruined by
the cupidity of Jacques Ferrand; La Lorraine, a poor washer-woman, to whom
Fleur-de-Marie had formerly given what money she had left; and Jeanne
Duport, sister of Pique-Vinaigre, the patterer of La Force. We know
Mademoiselle de Fermont and the juggler's sister. La Lorraine was a woman
of about twenty, with a sweet face, but extremely pale and thin: she was in
the last stage of consumption; there was no hope of saving her; she knew
it, and was wasting away slowly. The distance was not so great between the
beds of these two women but they could speak in a low tone, and not be
overheard by the sisters.

"There is another one gone," whispered La Lorraine, thinking of the dead,
and speaking to herself. "She will not suffer more--she is very happy."

"She is very happy, if she has left no children," added Jeanne.

"Oh! you are not asleep, neighbor," said La Lorraine, to her. "How do you
get on, for your first night here? Last night, as soon as you were brought
in, you were placed in bed, and I did not dare to speak to you; I heard you
sob.

"Oh! yes; I have wept much."

"You are, then, in much pain?"

"Yes, but I am used to pain; it is from sorrow I weep. At length I fell
asleep; I was still sleeping when the noise of the doors awoke me. When the
priest came in, and the good sisters knelt, I soon saw it was a woman who
was dying; then I said to myself a pater and an ave for her."

"I also; and, as I have the same complaint, as this woman had, who is just
dead, I could not prevent myself from saying, 'Here is another whose
sufferings are ended; she is very happy!'"

"Yes, as I told you, if she had no children."

"You have children, then?"

"Three," said the sister of Pique-Vinaigre, with a sigh,

"And you?"

"I had a little girl, but I did not keep her long. I am a washer-woman at
the boats; I worked as long as I could. But everything has an end; when my
strength failed me, my bread failed me also. They turned me oat of my
lodgings; I do not know what would have become of me, except for a poor
woman who gave me shelter in a cellar, where she had concealed herself to
escape from her husband, who wished to kill her. There I was confined on
the straw; but, happily, this good woman knew a young girl, beautiful and
charitable as an angel from heaven: this young girl had a little money; she
took me from the cellar, and placed me in a furnished room, paying the rent
in advance, giving me, besides, a willow cradle for my child, and forty
francs for myself, with some clothes."

"Good little girl! I also have met, by chance, with one who may be called
her equal, a young dressmaker, very obliging. I had gone to see my poor
brother, who is a prisoner," said Jeanne, after a moment of hesitation;
"and I met in the visitors' room this young girl of whom I speak; having
heard me say to my brother that I was not happy, she came to me, much
embarrassed, to offer what services were in her power."

"How kind that was in her!"

"I accepted; she gave me her address, and, two days after, this dear little
Rigolette--that's her dear name--gave me employment."

"Rigolette!" cried La Lorraine.

"You know her?"

"No; but the young girl who was so generous to me, several times mentioned
the name of Rigolette: they were friends together."

"Well!" said Jeanne, smiling sadly, "since we are neighbors in sickness, we
should be friends like our two benefactresses."

"Willingly: my name is Annette Gerbier, otherwise La Lorraine,
washer-woman."

"And mine, Jeanne Duport, fringe-maker. Ah! it is so good, at the hospital,
to find some one who is not altogether a stranger, above all, when you come
for the first time, and you have many troubles! But I do not wish to think
of this. Tell me, La Lorraine, what was the name of the young girl who has
been so kind to you?"

"She was called La Goualeuse. All my sorrow is that I have not seen her for
a long time. She was as beautiful as the Holy Virgin, with fine flaxen hair
and blue eyes, so sweet--so sweet! Unfortunately, notwithstanding her
assistance, my poor child died at two months," and Lorraine wiped away a
tear.

"Poor Lorraine!"

"I regret, my child, for myself, not for her, poor little dear! She would
have too much to struggle with, for she soon would have been an orphan. I
have not a long time to live."

"You should not have such ideas at your age. Have you been sick for a long
time?"

"It will soon be three months. Bless me! when I had to work for myself and
my child, I increased my labor; the winter was cold, I caught a cold on my
chest; at this time I lost my little girl. In watching her I forgot myself.
To that add sorrow, and I am what you see me, consumptive, doomed--as was
the actress who has just died."

"At your age there is always hope."

"The actress was only two years older, and you see---"

"She whom the good sisters are watching now, was she an actress?"

"Oh, yes--what a fate! She had been beautiful as the day. She had plenty of
money, equipages, diamonds, but, unfortunately, the small-pox disfigured
her; then want came, then poverty--behold her dead in the hospital. Yet,
she was not proud; on the contrary, she was kind and gentle to everybody;
she told us that she had written to a gentleman whom she had known in her
prosperity, who had loved her; she wrote to him to come and reclaim her
body, because it hurt her feelings to think she would be dissected--cut in
pieces."

"And this gentleman has come?"

"No."

"Oh! that is very cruel."

"At each moment the poor woman asked for him, saying continually, 'Oh! he
will come! oh! he will surely come;' and yet she died, and he had not
come."

"Her end must have been so much the more painful."

"Oh, Lord, yes; for she dreaded so much what they would do to her body."

"After having been rich and happy, to die here is sad! For us, it is only a
change of misery."




CHAPTER XVIII.

THE VISIT.


"Speaking of that," resumed La Lorraine, after a moment's hesitation, "I
wish you would render me a service."

"Speak."

"If I should die, as is probable, before you leave this, I wish you would
claim my body--I have the same dread as the actress; and I have put aside
the small amount of money I have left, so that I can be buried."

"Do not have such ideas."

"Never mind--do you promise me?"

"Yes! but Lord be praised, that will not happen."

"But, if it does happen, I shall not have, thanks to you, the same
misfortune as the actress."

"Poor lady, after having been rich, to end thus!"

"The actress was not the only one in this room who has been rich, Madame
Jeanne."

"Call me Jeanne, as I call you La Lorraine."

"You are very kind."

"Who is it that has been rich besides?"

"A young person not over fifteen, who was brought here last night, before
you came. She was so weak that they were obliged to carry her. The sister
said that this young girl and her mother were very respectable people, who
had been ruined."

"Her mother is also here?"

"No: the mother was so very sick, that she could not be moved. The poor
child would not leave her, and they profited by a fainting fit to bring her
here. It was the proprietor of a wretched lodging-house who, for fear that
they would die in his abode, applied for their admission."

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