Towards the end of the eighteenth century science was sundered as widely
by the apparition of Mesmer as art had been by that of Gluck. After
re-discovering magnetism Mesmer came to France, where, from time
immemorial, inventors have flocked to obtain recognition for their
discoveries. France, thanks to her lucid language, is in some sense the
clarion of the world.
“If homoeopathy gets to Paris it is saved,” said Hahnemann, recently.
“Go to France,” said Monsieur de Metternich to Gall, “and if they laugh
at your bumps you will be famous.”
Mesmer had disciples and antagonists as ardent for and against his
theories as the Piccinists and the Gluckists for theirs. Scientific
France was stirred to its center; a solemn conclave was opened. Before
judgment was rendered, the medical faculty proscribed, in a body,
Mesmer’s so-called charlatanism, his tub, his conducting wires, and
his theory. But let us at once admit that the German, unfortunately,
compromised his splendid discovery by enormous pecuniary claims. Mesmer
was defeated by the doubtfulness of facts, by universal ignorance of the
part played in nature by imponderable fluids then unobserved, and by his
own inability to study on all sides a science possessing a triple
front. Magnetism has many applications; in Mesmer’s hands it was, in
its relation to the future, merely what cause is to effect. But, if
the discoverer lacked genius, it is a sad thing both for France and
for human reason to have to say that a science contemporaneous with
civilization, cultivated by Egypt and Chaldea, by Greece and India, met
in Paris in the eighteenth century the fate that Truth in the person of
Galileo found in the sixteenth; and that magnetism was rejected and cast
out by the combined attacks of science and religion, alarmed for their
own positions. Magnetism, the favorite science of Jesus Christ and
one of the divine powers which he gave to his disciples, was no better
apprehended by the Church than by the disciples of Jean-Jacques,
Voltaire, Locke, and Condillac. The Encyclopedists and the clergy were
equally averse to the old human power which they took to be new. The
miracles of the convulsionaries, suppressed by the Church and smothered
by the indifference of scientific men (in spite of the precious writings
of the Councilor, Carre de Montgeron) were the first summons to make
experiments with those human fluids which give power to employ certain
inward forces to neutralize the sufferings caused by outward agents. But
to do this it was necessary to admit the existence of fluids intangible,
invisible, imponderable, three negative terms in which the science of
that day chose to see a definition of the void. In modern philosophy
there is no void. Ten feet of void and the world crumbles away! To
materialists especially the world is full, all things hang together, are
linked, related, organized. “The world as the result of chance,” said
Diderot, “is more explicable than God. The multiplicity of causes, the
incalculable number of issues presupposed by chance, explain creation.
Take the Eneid and all the letters composing it; if you allow me time
and space, I can, by continuing to cast the letters, arrive at last at
the Eneid combination.”
Those foolish persons who deify all rather than admit a God recoil
before the infinite divisibility of matter which is in the nature of
imponderable forces. Locke and Condillac retarded by fifty years the
immense progress which natural science is now making under the great
principle of unity due to Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire. Some intelligent
persons, without any system, convinced by facts conscientiously studied,
still hold to Mesmer’s doctrine, which recognizes the existence of a
penetrative influence acting from man to man, put in motion by the will,
curative by the abundance of the fluid, the working of which is in fact
a duel between two forces, between an ill to be cured and the will to
cure it.
The phenomena of somnambulism, hardly perceived by Mesmer, were revealed
by du Puysegur and Deleuze; but the Revolution put a stop to their
discoveries and played into the hands of the scientists and scoffers.
Among the small number of believers were a few physicians. They were
persecuted by their brethren as long as they lived. The respectable body
of Parisian doctors displayed all the bitterness of religious warfare
against the Mesmerists, and were as cruel in their hatred as it was
possible to be in those days of Voltairean tolerance. The orthodox
physician refused to consult with those who adopted the Mesmerian
heresy. In 1820 these heretics were still proscribed. The miseries and
sorrows of the Revolution had not quenched the scientific hatred. It is
only priests, magistrates, and physicians who can hate in that way.
The official robe is terrible! But ideas are even more implacable than
things.
Doctor Bouvard, one of Minoret’s friends, believed in the new faith,
and persevered to the day of his death in studying a science to which
he sacrificed the peace of his life, for he was one of the chief “betes
noires” of the Parisian faculty. Minoret, a valiant supporter of
the Encyclopedists, and a formidable adversary of Desion, Mesmer’s
assistant, whose pen had great weight in the controversy, quarreled with
his old friend, and not only that, but he persecuted him. His conduct
to Bouvard must have caused him the only remorse which troubled the
serenity of his declining years. Since his retirement to Nemours the
science of imponderable fluids (the only name suitable for magnetism,
which, by the nature of its phenomena, is closely allied to light and
electricity) had made immense progress, in spite of the ridicule of
Parisian scientists. Phrenology and physiognomy, the departments of Gall
and Lavater (which are in fact twins, for one is to the other as cause
is to effect), proved to the minds of more than one physiologist the
existence of an intangible fluid which is the basis of the phenomena
of the human will, and from which result passions, habits, the shape of
faces and of skulls. Magnetic facts, the miracles of somnambulism, those
of divination and ecstasy, which open a way to the spiritual world, were
fast accumulating. The strange tale of the apparitions of the farmer
Martin, so clearly proved, and his interview with Louis XVIII.; a
knowledge of the intercourse of Swedenborg with the departed, carefully
investigated in Germany; the tales of Walter Scott on the effects of
“second sight”; the extraordinary faculties of some fortune-tellers, who
practice as a single science chiromancy, cartomancy, and the horoscope;
the facts of catalepsy, and those of the action of certain morbid
affections on the properties of the diaphragm,--all such phenomena,
curious, to say the least, each emanating from the same source, were now
undermining many scepticisms and leading even the most indifferent minds
to the plane of experiments. Minoret, buried in Nemours, was ignorant of
this movement of minds, strong in the north of Europe but still weak
in France where, however, many facts called marvelous by superficial
observers, were happening, but falling, alas! like stones to the bottom
of the sea, in the vortex of Parisian excitements.
At the bottom of the present year the doctor’s tranquillity was shaken
by the following letter:--
My old comrade,--All friendship, even if lost, has rights which it is
difficult to set aside. I know that you are still living, and I
remember far less our enmity than our happy days in that old hovel of
Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre.
At a time when I expect to soon leave the world I have it on my heart to
prove to you that magnetism is about to become one of the most important
of the sciences--if indeed all science is not _one_. I can overcome
your incredulity by proof. Perhaps I shall owe to your curiosity the
happiness of taking you once more by the hand--as in the days before
Mesmer. Always yours,
Bouvard.
Stung like a lion by a gadfly the old scientist rushed to Paris and
left his card on Bouvard, who lived in the Rue Ferou near Saint-Sulpice.
Bouvard sent a card to his hotel on which was written “To-morrow; nine
o’clock, Rue Saint-Honore, opposite the Assumption.”
Minoret, who seemed to have renewed his youth, could not sleep. He went
to see some of his friends among the faculty to inquire if the world
were turned upside down, if the science of medicine still had a school,
if the four faculties any longer existed. The doctors reassured him,
declaring that the old spirit of opposition was as strong as ever, only,
instead of persecuting as heretofore, the Academies of Medicine and
of Sciences rang with laughter as they classed magnetic facts with the
tricks of Comus and Comte and Bosco, with jugglery and prestidigitation
and all that now went by the name of “amusing physics.”
This assurance did not prevent old Minoret from keeping the appointment
made for him by Bouvard. After an enmity of forty-four years the
two antagonists met beneath a porte-cochere in the Rue Saint-Honore.
Frenchmen have too many distractions of mind to hate each other long. In
Paris especially, politics, literature, and science render life so vast
that every man can find new worlds to conquer where all pretensions
may live at ease. Hatred requires too many forces fully armed. None but
public bodies can keep alive the sentiment. Robespierre and Danton
would have fallen into each other’s arms at the end of forty-four years.
However, the two doctors each withheld his hand and did not offer it.
Bouvard spoke first:--
“You seem wonderfully well.”
“Yes, I am--and you?” said Minoret, feeling that the ice was now broken.
“As you see.”
“Does magnetism prevent people from dying?” asked Minoret in a joking
tone, but without sharpness.
“No, but it almost prevented me from living.”
“Then you are not rich?” exclaimed Minoret.
“Pooh!” said Bouvard.
“But I am!” cried the other.
“It is not your money but your convictions that I want. Come,” replied
Bouvard.
“Oh! you obstinate fellow!” said Minoret.
The Mesmerist led his sceptic, with some precaution, up a dingy
staircase to the fourth floor.
At this particular time an extraordinary man had appeared in Paris,
endowed by faith with incalculable power, and controlling magnetic
forces in all their applications. Not only did this great unknown
(who still lives) heal from a distance the worst and most inveterate
diseases, suddenly and radically, as the Savior of men did formerly,
but he was also able to call forth instantaneously the most remarkable
phenomena of somnambulism and conquer the most rebellious will. The
countenance of this mysterious being, who claims to be responsible to
God alone and to communicate, like Swedenborg, with angels, resembles
that of a lion; concentrated, irresistible energy shines in it. His
features, singularly contorted, have a terrible and even blasting
aspect. His voice, which comes from the depths of his being, seems
charged with some magnetic fluid; it penetrates the hearer at every
pore. Disgusted by the ingratitude of the public after his many
cures, he has now returned to an impenetrable solitude, a voluntary
nothingness. His all-powerful hand, which has restored a dying daughter
to her mother, fathers to their grief-stricken children, adored
mistresses to lovers frenzied with love, cured the sick given over
by physicians, soothed the sufferings of the dying when life became
impossible, wrung psalms of thanksgiving in synagogues, temples, and
churches from the lips of priests recalled to the one God by the same
miracle,--that sovereign hand, a sun of life dazzling the closed eyes
of the somnambulist, has never been raised again even to save the
heir-apparent of a kingdom. Wrapped in the memory of his past mercies
as in a luminous shroud, he denies himself to the world and lives for
heaven.
But, at the dawn of his reign, surprised by his own gift, this man,
whose generosity equaled his power, allowed a few interested persons to
witness his miracles. The fame of his work, which was mighty, and could
easily be revived to-morrow, reached Dr. Bouvard, who was then on the
verge of the grave. The persecuted mesmerist was at last enabled to
witness the startling phenomena of a science he had long treasured
in his heart. The sacrifices of the old man touched the heart of the
mysterious stranger, who accorded him certain privileges. As Bouvard now
went up the staircase he listened to the twittings of his old antagonist
with malicious delight, answering only, “You shall see, you shall see!”
with the emphatic little nods of a man who is sure of his facts.
The two physicians entered a suite of rooms that were more than modest.
Bouvard went alone into a bedroom which adjoined the salon where he left
Minoret, whose distrust was instantly awakened; but Bouvard returned
at once and took him into the bedroom, where he saw the mysterious
Swedenborgian, and also a woman sitting in an armchair. The woman did
not rise, and seemed not to notice the entrance of the two old men.
“What! no tub?” cried Minoret, smiling.
“Nothing but the power of God,” answered the Swedenborgian gravely. He
seemed to Minoret to be about fifty years of age.
The three men sat down and the mysterious stranger talked of the rain
and the coming fine weather, to the great astonishment of Minoret, who
thought he was being hoaxed. The Swedenborgian soon began, however, to
question his visitor on his scientific opinions, and seemed evidently to
be taking time to examine him.
“You have come here solely from curiosity, monsieur,” he said at
last. “It is not my habit to prostitute a power which, according to my
conviction, emanates from God; if I made a frivolous or unworthy use
of it, it would be taken from me. Nevertheless, there is some hope,
Monsieur Bouvard tells me, of changing the opinions of one who has
opposed us, of enlightening a scientific man whose mind is candid;
I have therefore determined to satisfy you. That woman whom you see
there,” he continued, pointing to her, “is now in a somnambulic sleep.
The statements and manifestations of somnambulists declare that this
state is a delightful other life, during which the inner being, freed
from the trammels laid upon the exercise of our faculties by the visible
world, moves in a world which we mistakenly term invisible. Sight and
hearing are then exercised in a manner far more perfect than any we know
of here, possibly without the help of the organs we now employ, which
are the scabbard of the luminous blades called sight and hearing. To a
person in that state, distance and material obstacles do not exist, or
they can be traversed by a life within us for which our body is a
mere receptacle, a necessary shelter, a casing. Terms fail to describe
effects that have lately been rediscovered, for to-day the words
imponderable, intangible, invisible have no meaning to the fluid whose
action is demonstrated by magnetism. Light is ponderable by its heat,
which, by penetrating bodies, increases their volume; and certainly
electricity is only too tangible. We have condemned things themselves
instead of blaming the imperfection of our instruments.”
“She sleeps,” said Minoret, examining the woman, who seemed to him to
belong to an inferior class.
“Her body is for the time being in abeyance,” said the Swedenborgian.
“Ignorant persons suppose that condition to be sleep. But she will prove
to you that there is a spiritual universe, and that the mind when
there does not obey the laws of this material universe. I will send her
wherever you wish to go,--a hundred miles from here or to China, as you
will. She will tell you what is happening there.”
“Send her to my house in Nemours, Rue des Bourgeois; that will do,” said
Minoret.
He took Minoret’s hand, which the doctor let him take, and held it for a
moment seeming to collect himself; then with his other hand he took that
of the woman sitting in the arm-chair and placed the hand of the doctor
in it, making a sign to the old sceptic to seat himself beside this
oracle without a tripod. Minoret observed a slight tremor on the
absolutely calm features of the woman when their hands were thus united
by the Swedenborgian, but the action, though marvelous in its effects,
was very simply done.
“Obey him,” said the unknown personage, extending his hand above the
head of the sleeping woman, who seemed to imbibe both light and life
from him, “and remember that what you do for him will please me.--You
can now speak to her,” he added, addressing Minoret.
“Go to Nemours, to my house, Rue des Bourgeois,” said the doctor.
“Give her time; put your hand in hers until she proves to you by what
she tells you that she is where you wish her to be,” said Bouvard to his
old friend.
“I see a river,” said the woman in a feeble voice, seeming to look
within herself with deep attention, notwithstanding her closed eyelids.
“I see a pretty garden--”
“Why do you enter by the river and the garden?” said Minoret.
“Because they are there.”
“Who?”
“The young girl and her nurse, whom you are thinking of.”
“What is the garden like?” said Minoret.
“Entering by the steps which go down to the river, there is the right,
a long brick gallery, in which I see books; it ends in a singular
building,--there are wooden bells, and a pattern of red eggs. To the
left, the wall is covered with climbing plants, wild grapes, Virginia
jessamine. In the middle is a sun-dial. There are many plants in pots.
Your child is looking at the flowers. She shows them to her nurse--she
is making holes in the earth with her trowel, and planting seeds. The
nurse is raking the path. The young girl is pure as an angel, but the
beginning of love is there, faint as the dawn--”
“Love for whom?” asked the doctor, who, until now, would have listened
to no word said to him by somnambulists. He considered it all jugglery.
“You know nothing--though you have lately been uneasy about her health,”
answered the woman. “Her heart has followed the dictates of nature.”
“A woman of the people to talk like this!” cried the doctor.
“In the state she is in all persons speak with extraordinary
perception,” said Bouvard.
“But who is it that Ursula loves?”
“Ursula does not know that she loves,” said the woman with a shake of
the head; “she is too angelic to know what love is; but her mind is
occupied by him; she thinks of him; she tries to escape the thought;
but she returns to it in spite of her will to abstain.--She is at the
piano--”
“But who is he?”
“The son of a lady who lives opposite.”
“Madame de Portenduere?”
“Portenduere, did you say?” replied the sleeper. “Perhaps so. But
there’s no danger; he is not in the neighbourhood.”
“Have they spoken to each other?” asked the doctor.
“Never. They have looked at one another. She thinks him charming. He is,
in fact, a fine man; he has a good heart. She sees him from her window;
they see each other in church. But the young man no longer thinks of
her.”
“His name?”
“Ah! to tell you that I must read it, or hear it. He is named Savinien;
she has just spoken his name; she thinks it sweet to say; she has
looked in the almanac for his fete-day and marked a red dot against
it,--child’s play, that. Ah! she will love well, with as much strength
as purity; she is not a girl to love twice; love will so dye her soul
and fill it that she will reject all other sentiments.”
“Where do you see that?”
“In her. She will know how to suffer; she inherits that; her father and
her mother suffered much.”
The last words overcame the doctor, who felt less shaken than surprised.
It is proper to state that between her sentences the woman paused for
several minutes, during which time her attention became more and more
concentrated. She was seen to see; her forehead had a singular aspect;
an inward effort appeared there; it seemed to clear or cloud by some
mysterious power, the effects of which Minoret had seen in dying persons
at moments when they appeared to have the gift of prophecy. Several
times she made gestures which resembled those of Ursula.
“Question her,” said the mysterious stranger, to Minoret, “she will tell
you secrets you alone can know.”
“Does Ursula love me?” asked Minoret.
“Almost as much as she loves God,” was the answer. “But she is very
unhappy at your unbelief. You do not believe in God; as if you could
prevent his existence! His word fills the universe. You are the cause of
her only sorrow.--Hear! she is playing scales; she longs to be a better
musician than she is; she is provoked with herself. She is thinking, ‘If
I could sing, if my voice were fine, it would reach his ear when he is
with his mother.’”
Doctor Minoret took out his pocket-book and noted the hour.
“Tell me what seeds she planted?”
“Mignonette, sweet-peas, balsams--”
“And what else?”
“Larkspur.”
“Where is my money?”
“With your notary; but you invest it so as not to lose the interest of a
single day.”
“Yes, but where is the money that I keep for my monthly expenses?”
“You put it in a large book bound in red, entitled ‘Pandects of
Justinian, Vol. II.’ between the last two leaves; the book is on the
shelf of folios above the glass buffet. You have a whole row of them.
Your money is in the last volume next to the salon--See! Vol. III. is
before Vol. II.--but you have no money, it is all in--”
“--thousand-franc notes,” said the doctor.
“I cannot see, they are folded. No, there are two notes of five hundred
francs.”
“You see them?”
“Yes.”
“How do they look?”
“One is old and yellow, the other white and new.”
This last phase of the inquiry petrified the doctor. He looked at
Bouvard with a bewildered air; but Bouvard and the Swedenborgian, who
were accustomed to the amazement of sceptics, were speaking together in
a low voice and appeared not to notice him. Minoret begged them to allow
him to return after dinner. The old philosopher wished to compose his
mind and shake off this terror, so as to put this vast power to some new
test, to subject it to more decisive experiments and obtain answers to
certain questions, the truth of which should do away with every sort of
doubt.
“Be here at nine o’clock this evening,” said the stranger. “I will
return to meet you.”
Doctor Minoret was in so convulsed a state that he left the room without
bowing, followed by Bouvard, who called to him from behind. “Well, what
do you say? what do you say?”
“I think I am mad, Bouvard,” answered Minoret from the steps of the
porte-cochere. “If that woman tells the truth about Ursula,--and none
but Ursula can know the things that sorceress has told me,--I shall say
that _you are right_. I wish I had wings to fly to Nemours this minute
and verify her words. But I shall hire a carriage and start at ten
o’clock to-night. Ah! am I losing my senses?”
“What would you say if you knew of a life-long incurable disease healed
in a moment; if you saw that great magnetizer bring sweat in torrents
from an herpetic patient, or make a paralyzed woman walk?”
“Come and dine, Bouvard; stay with me till nine o’clock. I must find
some decisive, undeniable test!”
“So be it, old comrade,” answered the other.
The reconciled enemies dined in the Palais-Royal. After a lively
conversation, which helped Minoret to evade the fever of the ideas which
were ravaging his brain, Bouvard said to him:--
“If you admit in that woman the faculty of annihilating or of traversing
space, if you obtain a certainty that here, in Paris, she sees and hears
what is said and done in Nemours, you must admit all other magnetic
facts; they are not more incredible than these. Ask her for some one
proof which you know will satisfy you--for you might suppose that we
obtained information to deceive you; but we cannot know, for instance,
what will happen at nine o’clock in your goddaughter’s bedroom.
Remember, or write down, what the sleeper will see and hear, and then go
home. Your little Ursula, whom I do not know, is not our accomplice,
and if she tells you that she has said and done what you have written
down--lower thy head, proud Hun!”
The two friends returned to the house opposite to the Assumption and
found the somnambulist, who in her waking state did not recognize Doctor
Minoret. The eyes of this woman closed gently before the hand of the
Swedenborgian, which was stretched towards her at a little distance, and
she took the attitude in which Minoret had first seen her. When her hand
and that of the doctor were again joined, he asked her to tell him what
was happening in his house at Nemours at that instant. “What is Ursula
doing?” he said.
“She is undressed; she has just curled her hair; she is kneeling on
her prie-Dieu, before an ivory crucifix fastened to a red velvet
background.”
“What is she saying?”
“Her evening prayers; she is commending herself to God; she implores
him to save her soul from evil thoughts; she examines her conscience and
recalls what she has done during the day; that she may know if she has
failed to obey his commands and those of the church--poor dear little
soul, she lays bare her breast!” Tears were in the sleeper’s eyes.
“She has done no sin, but she blames herself for thinking too much of
Savinien. She stops to wonder what he is doing in Paris; she prays to
God to make him happy. She speaks of you; she is praying aloud.”
“Tell me her words.” Minoret took his pencil and wrote, as the sleeper
uttered it, the following prayer, evidently composed by the Abbe
Chaperon.
“My God, if thou art content with thine handmaid, who worships
thee and prays to thee with a love that is equal to her devotion,
who strives not to wander from thy sacred paths, who would gladly
die as thy Son died to glorify thy name, who desires to live in
the shadow of thy will--O God, who knoweth the heart, open the
eyes of my godfather, lead him in the way of salvation, grant him
thy Divine grace, that he may live for thee in his last days; save
him from evil, and let me suffer in his stead. Kind Saint Ursula,
dear protectress, and you, Mother of God, queen of heaven,
archangels, and saints in Paradise, hear me! join your
intercessions to mine and have mercy upon us.”
The sleeper imitated so perfectly the artless gestures and the inspired
manner of his child that Doctor Minoret’s eyes were filled with tears.
“Does she say more?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Repeat it.”
“‘My dear godfather; I wonder who plays backgammon with him in Paris.’
She has blown out the light--her head is on the pillow--she turns to
sleep! Ah! she is off! How pretty she looks in her little night-cap.”
Minoret bowed to the great Unknown, wrung Bouvard by the hand, ran
downstairs and hastened to a cab-stand which at that time was near the
gates of a house since pulled down to make room for the Rue d’Alger.
There he found a coachman who was willing to start immediately for
Fontainebleau. The moment the price was agreed on, the old man, who
seemed to have renewed his youth, jumped into the carriage and started.
According to agreement, he stopped to rest the horse at Essonne, but
arrived at Fontainebleau in time for the diligence to Nemours, on which
he secured a seat, and dismissed his coachman. He reached home at five
in the morning, and went to bed, with his life-long ideas of physiology,
nature, and metaphysics in ruins about him, and slept till nine o’clock,
so wearied was he with the events of his journey.