I returned next day. On the steps of the Empire château I encountered
the family doctor. He is a spare, elderly man whom you meet wherever
there is good music to be heard. He seems like a man perpetually
listening to the harmonies of some inward concert. He is for ever under
the spell of sounds and lives by his ear alone. He is specially noted
for his treatment of nervous complaints. Some say he is a genius;
others that he is mad. Certainly there is something peculiar about him.
When I saw him he was coming down the steps; his feet, his finger and
his lips moving in time to some intricate measure.
“Well, doctor,” I said with an involuntary quaver in my voice, “and how
is your little patient?”
“She means to live,” he answered.
“You will pull her through for us, won’t you?” I said eagerly.
“I tell you she means to live.”
“And you think, doctor, that people live just as long as they really
want to and that we do not die save with our own consent?”
“Certainly.”
I walked with him along the gravel path. He stopped for a moment at the
gate, his head bowed as if in thought.
“Certainly,” he said again, “but they must really want to and not merely
think they want to. Conscious will is an illusion that can deceive none
save the vulgar. People who believe they will a thing because they say
they will it, are fools. The only genuine act of volition is that in
which all the obscure forces of our nature take part. That will is
unconscious, it is divine. It moulds the world. By it we exist, and
when it fails we cease to be. The world _wills_, otherwise it would not
exist.”
We walked on a few steps farther.
“Look here,” he exclaimed, tapping his stick against the bark of an oak
tree that spread out its broad canopy of grey branches above our heads,
“if that fellow there had not _willed_ to grow, I should like to know
what power could have made him do so.”
But I had ceased to listen.
“So you have hopes,” I said at length, “that Marguerite . . .”
But he was a stubborn little old fellow.
He murmured as he walked away: “The Will’s crowning Victory is Love.”
And I stood and watched him as he departed with little quick steps,
beating time to a tune that was running in his head.
I went quickly back to the château and found little Marguerite. The
moment I saw her, I realized that she had the will to live. She was
still very pale and very thin, but her eyes had more colour in them and
were not so big, and her lips, lately so dead-looking and so silent,
were gay with prattling talk.
“You are late,” she said. “Come here, see! I have a theatre and actors.
Play me a beautiful piece. They say that ‘Hop o’ my Thumb’ is nice. Play
‘Hop o’ my Thumb’ for me.”
[Illustration: 090]
You may be sure I did not refuse. However, I encountered great
difficulties at the very outset of my undertaking. I pointed out to
Marguerite that the only actors she had were princes and princesses,
and that we wanted woodmen, cooks and a certain number of folks of all
sorts.
She thought for a moment and then said:
“A prince dressed like a cook; that one there looks like a cook, don’t
you think?”
“Yes, I think so too.”
“Well, then, we’ll make woodmen and cooks out of all the princes we have
over.”
And that’s what we did. O Wisdom, what a day we spent together!
Many others like it followed in its train. I watched Marguerite taking
an ever firmer hold on life. Now she is quite well again. I had a share
in this miracle. I discovered a tiny portion of that gift wherein the
apostles so richly abounded when they healed the sick by the laying on
of hands.
_Editor’s Note_.--I found this manuscript in a train on the Northern
Railway. I give it to the public without alteration of any sort, save
that, as the names were those of well-known persons, I have thought it
well to suppress them.
Anatole France.
[Illustration: 093]